Just Stay Out of Trouble

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It began innocently enough, with a conversation over tea. My friend was telling me about a new real estate project he had been “looking into.” He didn’t say much at first, just that it was in a location everyone said was going to boom in a few years. The government had announced a new airport and a highway project nearby. Also, as per my friend, the pre-launch price was “ridiculously good,” and the developer had a name people in the city recognised.

He didn’t sit on it for long. Within days, he had paid the booking amount and signed the papers. In his mind, the deal was already a success. He could picture the appreciation in value and the approving nods from his family and friends when he’d tell them he saw the opportunity early. It all looked like a straight road to a happy ending.

For a while, nothing seemed amiss. The updates from the developer came regularly enough and his excitement stayed intact.

But somewhere around the one-year mark, the updates got vaguer. The promised approvals, which were supposedly just around the corner, kept being “a few months away.” The construction site, when he visited, seemed eerily quiet. The “prime location” wasn’t showing signs of the surrounding development that had been confidently predicted. In fact, rumours started floating around about financing issues and disputes with contractors.

Since then, every conversation I had with my friend about the project started to carry a faint undertone of worry. By the time he truly understood the depth of the problem, the easy exits were gone. His money was tied up—and that was big money for him—and the emotional weight of the decision began to settle in.

I still remember him saying, “If I had just waited and thought it through well before signing, I’d have seen what I didn’t want to see then. But I didn’t want to miss out.”

That line stayed with me, because I’ve heard several variations of it over the years and it’s the same trap so many of us fall into.

We do this in real estate dealings, in business partnerships, and also when making stock market decisions. We tell ourselves the timing is too good, or the opportunity too rare, or even that the upside is too obvious. We also ignore the little hesitations (vague terms in an agreement, perfectly sounding story, etc.) since slowing down feels like losing our edge.

The trouble is that in each of these cases, getting out is far harder than getting in. You don’t just reverse the decision, but also deal with the sunk costs, the awkwardness, the explanations, and sometimes the guilt of having pulled others in with you. And all of that could have been avoided with a little more space, a little more pause, between “I like this” and “I’m in.”

Warren Buffett once said:

It’s a whole lot easier to stay out of trouble than it is to get out of trouble.

It sounds almost trivial until you’ve lived through the mess of trying to undo a decision you wish you hadn’t made.

Over the years, I’ve built my own list of troubles I prefer to keep at a distance:

• Contracts
• Liquor and smoking
• Junk and packaged food
• Gambling
• Adventure sports
• Get-rich-quick schemes
• Leverage in life and investing
• Certain business groups
• Complex businesses, bad businesses, bad managements
• Driving aggressively to “save” a few minutes
• Getting into unnecessary online debates
• People who thrive on drama
• Lending money to friends or relatives without clear terms
• Replying to messages or emails when angry or emotional
• Saying yes to social or speaking obligations I already know I’ll resent
• Taking sides in other people’s disputes
• Agreeing to “partnerships” without clear roles and expectations
• Accepting freebies that come with hidden commitments or expectations
• Acting on fear of missing out rather than on understanding
• Making big financial commitments in a rush
• Posting or commenting online without considering the ripple effects
• Arguing with my wife (when I know she’s often right)

You may think I’m risk-averse to the point of paralysis, but it’s not like that. It’s just that I’ve realised how much time, money, and peace you save by simply not walking into certain rooms in the first place.

You see, we like to think of trouble as something that happens to us from the outside. But if we’re honest, most trouble begins within us, long before the outside world delivers its blow. It begins in the silent impatience to make something happen, and in the discomfort of sitting with uncertainty. Worse, it also happens in the subtle urge to prove ourselves, or in that flicker of greed that tells us, “If you don’t act now, you’ll lose this forever.”

I am saying this from experience, almost like having a Master’s degree in stepping into things I should have left alone (some from the above list). And the pattern is always the same. It starts from a quick nod to the risks, followed by a much longer conversation about why those risks don’t really apply this time. Then comes the decision, the commitment, and eventually, the slow, reluctant realisation that you now have to deal with something you could have simply walked past.

Now, the strange thing amidst all this is that trouble rarely looks like trouble at first. It often comes dressed as opportunity or urgency. And when you are already leaning toward it, the disguise is perfect. This is why staying out is almost always easier than getting out.

Consider investing. Most of us spend our time asking, “What should I buy?” Very few ask, “What should I avoid?” This is because we pay attention to investors who make bold moves (“Oh, did you hear of that investor who made a 40x on that stock he was talking about on Twitter just 4 years ago?”)

We love the story of someone who bet big and won. But it’s the investor who does the boring thing of simply avoiding ruin by sidestepping the permanent loss of capital, that often ends up far ahead, without needing any heroics (multi-baggers in their portfolio).

The same is true in life. You don’t need to fight every fight and accept every invitation. When you want to avoid certain paths, don’t assume it’s about fear. In fact, it may be about preserving your clarity, energy, and freedom for the things that truly matter.

Now, we often see pausing before deciding as a sign of weakness or hesitation. But it’s not that. A pause is not an absence of action. Instead, it’s the space where you can actually see. And in that space, you might notice things that a rushing mind will miss, like the gap between promise and reality, the mismatch between words and actions, and sometimes the faint smell of something off even when the surface looks perfect (my wife is an expert at spotting this).

The friend who got into the real estate mess didn’t lack intelligence. What he lacked in that moment was space between the sales pitch and the decision. That space could have saved him years of regret.

So, how do you create that space? I’ve learned it the hard way, but making it a habit to delay any big decision, whether financial, personal, or professional, by at least 4-5 days is often a saviour. If it truly is a good opportunity, it will survive your pause. If it starts to feel less convincing after a few nights’ sleep, you’ve likely saved yourself trouble.

Another practice is to watch for emotional hooks. Greed, fear, vanity, and the fear of missing out are the four most reliable drivers of bad decisions. If you feel any of them strongly, that’s a sign to slow down.

You can also ask yourself the “regret test”: “If this goes wrong, how much will I regret it? And if it goes right, will it really change my life, or will it just be nice to have?” If the downside feels life-altering and the upside feels mild, that’s a signal to step away.

Keeping an “avoid list,” like I’ve mentioned above, helps too. In investing, that might mean certain sectors, business models, or types of management you’ve learned to distrust. In life, it could be people, patterns, or environments that consistently lead to bad outcomes. Writing them down and reviewing them regularly turns vague intuition into conscious filters. And just as important is learning from close calls, not just disasters. Most people reflect only after something has gone wrong. But if you think back to the moments where you almost made a bad choice and got lucky instead, you’ll uncover some of your most valuable lessons.

You see, the cost of getting out of trouble is rarely just the money or time. It’s the emotional drag, the way it occupies your thoughts, the resentment toward yourself for stepping into it in the first place.

Pride makes you hold on longer than you should. Sunk costs keep you from cutting your losses. And the story you’ve told yourself and others about how smart your choice was makes it harder to reverse without feeling foolish. All of this means you fight not just the problem, but yourself.

None of this means avoiding all risk. Life itself is risk. To love, to create, and to step into the unknown is to risk. But there is a difference between risk that comes from understanding and risk that comes from impulse. The first may fail, but it leaves you wiser. The second often leaves scars that take years to heal.

We spend so much of life repairing yesterday’s mistakes that we forget it’s possible to live without constantly making new ones. The real ease Buffett talks about isn’t the ease of a life without challenge, but the ease of a mind that doesn’t add unnecessary suffering to what’s already there.

If you can begin at the first step before the story in your head takes over, you may find there’s less to fix and less to regret. You’re simply living, moving, and acting from a mind that sees. And when there’s such seeing, staying out of trouble stops feeling like an achievement, but becomes as natural as breathing.

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