When Flipping a Coin Ain’t Good Enough
Ah, decisions! I have written before about how decision-making can be a challenge in our household. Confronted with the need to choose between options, we agonize—often out of proportion with the significance of the decision. We’re gradually learning to let go of the little stuff. (We’ve found that rock-paper-scissors and coin-flipping are useful tactics.)
But what do you do when confronted with a real whopper of a decision—one whose scale justifies all the angst that you could possibly devote to it?
Welcome to our life right now. We have been offered an opportunity, and we have a decision to make. It will dramatically shape the future of our lives. It is complex, with many variables and many unknowns. It’s exciting and scary, and I am completely at sea. I usually cobble together some combination of logic and intuition to guide me in big decisions, but neither my head nor my gut is serving me well right now.
Rather than spending another evening running mental laps around this issue, I thought it might be helpful to consult the internet and share any useful findings with you. Not surprisingly, there is a lot of info about decision-making out there in the ether. Depending on your preference, you can use complex mathematical functions or a spiritual visioning process, or anything in between.
Here are a few tips that I found helpful for this particular decision. (You will note the prevalence of clichés in this list. As a writer, I am a bit sheepish about this, but as a human being I’m not. Sometimes the most important advice is overlooked because it is too familiar.)
1. Don’t try to do it all—Big decisions often get tangled up with lots of secondary decisions. This gets messy really fast. Trying to anticipate and optimize so many outcomes at once is paralyzing. Keep the focus on the core decision at hand, and gather as much information about that decision as you possibly can. You can figure out all the other stuff later.
2. Imagine the worst case—This is age-old advice, of course, but it’s useful to stop and actually do it. Fear is a driving factor in decision-making, and this exercise helps you factor it out. Often the worst outcome is not nearly as bad as you’d think, and having considered it gives you confidence as you make your choice. (This is especially helpful if you are leaning toward a particular option but hesitating because of fear.)
3. Trust your gut—Research shows that 90% of decision-making is intuitive. Leaders in business, medicine and the military have all acknowledged the importance of intuition in decisions. This is hard for me. I’m a pretty analytical person, but I’ve realized that going through the rational part of my decision-making process often just clears the way for me to discern what my heart is telling me.
4. About that fork in the road—We all know the Yogi Berra-ism: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Partly, of course, this just means that you’ve got to stop dithering and make up your mind. But to me it also implies permission to be bold. I’ve never totally bought into the business about regretting the things you don’t do more than the things you do, but I do believe that you build an interesting life by seizing the opportunities that are presented to you, even if they’re a little scary. Given the choice, I’ll err on the side of adventure every time—but only after I agonize about it first!
Often times not having a choice at all is the worst case scenario. It seems to me that often the choices we face and the decisions that need to be made feel like hard work – rather than the reward of hard work or good fortune. Ironic, eh?
For more information on the decisionmaking process (a study of the process not necessarily a book of answers) – I recommend Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide . He happens to be speaking here in Madison this Friday for the book festival.
I’m excited for you, Julia! Opportunities mean making big, scary choices. I believe that you and Chris and little E. will thrive in any situation that comes your way.
And I like your suggestion about imagining the worst case. That one helps me a lot. I like to look the worst in the face because it often emboldens me.
You guys are great!
I have taken the life tactic of not making decisions. I don’t shop around for anything, I buy the first one that I like of whatever it is. First college I visited – attended. First boy I dated – married. First house I looked at – bought. First car on the lot in my price range – bought.
I figure that in the long run I’d rather pay more/not get the very best (except in the case of Daniel!) than spend time and psychic energy worrying about making the best choice.
Vicki & I at lunch today were discussing our decision making style, which is to just go ahead and make a decision, knowing that it may not work out as we intended, but that at least we are keeping things moving, rather than stagnating. As the old adage goes, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
Also: In our affluent, consumer-oriented society, we are all too often presented with way too many options. Why are there 17,329 different types of shampoos in the aisles when really we only need two – for dandruff, and not for dandruff. Our hair will be as clean regardless of what we use to wash it.
Karen,
I envy your decision-making style! I’ve always been prone to agonizing. But I think that when I fret about a decision it usually means (a) the choice before me is actually inconsequential; or (b) all of the options are great. Or both.
Every now and then I have these flashes of humility where I realize just how absurdly lucky I am to have more choice and opportunity than most of the world could probably even imagine.
Just the other day, I realized that I spent more time contemplating which immersion blender to buy than we spent contemplating whether or not to make on offer on our house! 20 minutes vs. 2 minutes.