Rational v. Reasonable

Hello, 

This week, I was reading “The Psychology of Money” by Morgan Housel and he goes into detail about the difference between being rational and reasonable. 

This concept has been bouncing around my head non-stop since, so I thought I wanted to share my thoughts. 

For context, the differentiation is Rational decisions are purely made based on the logical truth of the scenario and Reasonable decisions consider the human factor in decision making. 

Example: a Rational Decision would be to never spend any money on anything other than necessary food, shelter, transportation, or any expenses that are required to keep your life afloat. 

A Reasonable Decision would acknowledge the need for saving, but would consider expenses that help you enjoy your life as necessary in order to help you continue on your path. 

You see, they both have their places, but the aspect that has really grabbed my attention this week is when it comes to relationships in all arenas. 

We all have boundaries either spoken or unspoken, and these boundaries can defy logic. Not in the sense that they aren’t logical, but in any relationship there are two parties and if only one side has the boundary, it is not illogical to break the boundary because, well, they don’t have that boundary. 

Therefore, in keeping your own boundaries or trying to respect someone else’s you have to act outside of the logical boundary. 

For example, if I don’t take meetings in the morning because that’s my best working time. Someone scheduling a meeting in the morning is not illogical, but it doesn’t work best for my working schedule.

In order to be respectful of my morning hours boundary, you have to be reasonable rather than rational. You have to consider the other side of the meeting. 

Let’s do an example that all of us have experienced, when you invite people to a meeting, actually take a second and think to yourself, “does this person actually have to be in this meeting or would a summary give them all the context they need?” 

The Rational thought would be: Person X is in the Y department therefore Person X must attend Z meeting. 

But this doesn’t consider the person, or the tasks that their specific role require, and if that meeting is the actual best use of their time. 

Story time: Marketing is EVERYTHING. 

When we first quit to go full-time on The Hero’s Journal, we worked with a great marketer. The guy was extremely sharp and had a really good understanding of our market and how we could grow. In meetings, we kept running into the same issue, everything started to fall under his department's purview. Packaging… Marketing, Shipping… Marketing, Inventory management… marketing. 

There was a good case to the statement: anything that involves the end customer is a marketing job. In practice, it became that everything was under his direction, and it meant not just that we didn’t have control, but it meant he had way too much to take on. 

So, we could’ve fought definitionally till the cows come home about what was under each person’s department, or we could be reasonable and consider: even if everything is marketing, can you actually execute on everything? 

The answer was no, not because he wasn’t talented, but because it was too much work. 

This applies, probably more so, in personal and romantic relationships. 

We won’t open that can of worms :) 

Bye, 

Kyle