In Chapter 3 of 13 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, technology entrepreneur Idan Cohen answers "What Role Has Reflection Played in Shaping Your Personal Growth?" Cohen shares how he does not find reflection useful. He prefers to think about the present decision he needs to make and use patience and deliberation to ensure he chooses the best path forward possible. Idan Cohen is a technology entrepreneur and product management leader at Samsung Electronics. He co-founded Boxee, which was acquired by Samsung in early 2013.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: What role has reflection played in shaping your personal growth?
Idan Cohen: I obviously spend time thinking about things, but I don't think too much about, like, just the path that I take. You know, you can plan that so many things, but eventually they just have a habit of happening-- not always the way you want it. So in a way, why plan that much? So in a way, why reflect that much?
Erik Michielsen: Have you always been that way?
Idan Cohen: Yeah. Yeah. So it troubles me, you know, and, yeah, I definitely do reflect, but I just don't do anything with that. It doesn't really affect my decisions most of the time.
Erik Michielsen: Tell me more about that.
Idan Cohen: I know that I am a very bad decision maker when it comes to my own life. Like, it's just hard for me to make decisions even on a day-to-day. I contemplate on everything quite a lot. It can drive other people a little crazy sometimes, and it can drive me crazy sometimes. But having said that, I just-- whenever there's something that I need to choose, I tend to just linger with the decision, and eventually, the decision kind of happens on its own. And it's usually-- it was always for the best. So I'm not-- I don't stress about it. I stress about making the decision. I don't stress about what the outcome is.