Better Choices
I am going to blow your mind. At least, my mind was blown when I read this piece on how to make better big decisions. Like life-changing decisions. Like family building decisions.
The idea is that when most people sit down to make a decision, they give themselves two choices and then list the pros and cons of each choice. They go with the option that has the most pros. THIS is the problem because sometimes things don’t work out as planned. And then you’re left feeling like you should have made the other choice. You think that it comes down to the cons you didn’t consider; that there were two roads and you took the wrong one.
But researchers found that the way to make the best decision is to give yourself more alternatives. More options. Not just column A or column B, but columns C, D, and E as well. That if the decision is down to this or that, you’re not being creative enough or thinking deeply through all the possibilities out there. If you want to be happier with your decision, come up with more options.
According to the New York Times article,
Over the years, Professor Nutt and other researchers have demonstrated a strong correlation between the number of alternatives deliberated and the ultimate success of the decision itself. In one of his studies, Professor Nutt found that participants who considered only one alternative ultimately judged their decision a failure more than 50 percent of the time, while decisions that involved contemplating at least two alternatives were felt to be successes two-thirds of the time.
So how do you come up with the options? This is a place where three (or more) brains are better than one. To get more possibilities, ask other people to help you come up with the options. This is why everyone needs to start a blog; so you have a place to gather these kinds of thoughts.
And then once you have all the options, you make three scenarios for each option: (1) things working out, (2) things not working out, and then (3) things going sideways. So it’s not pros and cons: it’s stories.
The article continues with other ideas on decision making, and they’re all brilliant. But that first point? That first one blew my mind.
P.S. I put his book (Farsighted by Steven Johnson) on my TBR list. It sounds so good.
3 comments
This is amazing. It takes me back to a big decision we made about 15 years ago, not about family building but about work – that we deeply regretted. We opted to stay in a lower-pay, lower-prestige position (by “we” I mean my husband) in order to be closer to family and friends, but then the job he chose to stay ended up being kind of a soul-crushing experience for him, and we always regretting not taking the other offer. But my sister asked me recently how my life would be different now if we’d gone there, and I couldn’t really answer – I think maybe it’s finally enough time gone by that the regret is fading. But I wonder how things would have been different if we’d used this other approach, because we literally did the binary pros/cons thing and ended up feeling like that method failed us big time.
Oh, I am putting that book on my Goodreads list too!
This is so interesting because we are now working with our teens on how to make decisions. It affirms what we are trying to teach them, that it’s at your own peril to skip the option generation stage, and that you need to imagine each option going to possible conclusions. I like the part about the 3 scenarios, and I’ll incorporate that into our work with our teens.