Preserving Optionality

Questions

What is Preserving Optionality?

Preserving Optionality is the strategy of keeping choices open so you can adapt when circumstances change. Instead of committing everything early, you make small, affordable moves that give you the right to act later, like Thales securing olive presses with small deposits before a harvest.

How do you use Preserving Optionality?

To use it, build skills that work in many fields, keep an emergency fund, and test big life choices before committing. Just remember that at some point, you need to pick a path and commit.

When does Preserving Optionality matter?

Preserving Optionality is one of the 32 mental models for risk, the situations where you ask: What could go wrong, and what will I do if it does? Within that, it belongs to “Protecting yourself”, alongside Antifragility, De-Risking and Margin of Safety.

What is an example of Preserving Optionality?

Two stories show it at work: Thales and the olive presses (c. 600 BC) and BMW (2020s). Both are told in full in The Mental Models Daily Almanac, which has two stories for each of its 365 models.

Which mental models are related to Preserving Optionality?

Exit Strategy, Opportunity Costs and Burn the Boats. Preserving Optionality itself comes from human nature and judgement.