I think it’s a good idea to ask yourself, “what’s the best possible outcome I can expect?”
Things sometimes sound like a good idea, but we don’t take the time to figure out what the upper bound even is. Once we do, we can sometimes discover that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. It might be a good reward, but too little of it to be worth the cost and effort of obtaining it.
Knowing the best-case scenario also helps us evaluate how good we’re doing overall, on projects that don’t come to fruition all at once. If my garden can produce a theoretical maximum of one hundred tomatoes and I currently have 85 growing, then that’s pretty great! And maybe it’s not worth disrupting my operation to try to get a mere 15 more. But if I only grew 10 this season out of a potential 100, then it’s fine to try something radically different next season.
The Opportunity Machine 