Quick! Think of the last decision that you made. Was it a good decision or a bad one? Chances are that if the decision led to a positive outcome, you would label it a good decision. If the outcome was negative, you would call that a bad decision.
In her book How to Decide, Annie Duke calls this tendency, “resulting”. We confuse the outcome with the quality of the decision. In reality, many factors influence outcomes (including plain luck). As an example, you may jump a signal and get through safely. (Please don’t do this!) On another occasion, you may drive through a signal during a green light and an errant car could hit you. Was the decision to break the red light a good one, or the decision to wait for green bad?
In order to start making better decisions, we must learn to distinguish between the thought process of the decision and the outcome i.e. get out of the habit of resulting. In the long run, focusing on making sound decisions helps us get better outcomes. So how do we go about doing so?
Ask the right question. Sometimes, we confuse the symptoms for the root cause. Asking the right question ensures that you are at least in the realm of getting to a good decision. There are many tools for asking the right question, including the “5 Whys” popularised by Toyota. This includes asking a series of Why questions, that lead you to the kernel of the problem.
Walk through your decision with a friend or mentor. Answering their questions and explaining your thought process can help identify flaws in your logic. In popular literature, Watson was the perfect foil to Sherlock Holmes. Watson’s seemingly simple questions sharpened Holmes’ logical reasoning.
Watch out for analysis paralysis
Before taking a decision, consider whether a decision is reversible or not. When it is, the stakes aren’t as high. Knowing that your decision can be reversed, you are better off making a choice immediately. When a decision is irreversible or the outcome has very high stakes, you are better off waiting until the last moment and gathering as many facts as you can.
However, be very careful of “analysis paralysis” – the tendency to put off taking a decision in order to keep gathering more data. Remember that not taking a decision is also a decision.
Be careful who you listen to. We like to run our decisions by our family and friends. Often that is a good practice — they do have our best interests at heart. However, it is worth considering one extra step. Confidence in another person is a combination of that person’s competence and his or her character. Your close ones may not have the competence to give you good advice.
In such cases, it might be better to run your decision by a mentor. Alternately, a jealous colleague or friend might enjoy a bit of schadenfreude at your failures. Obviously, they aren’t good people to ask for help with important decisions.
What about your gut? Most people make a decision based on what their gut tells them. After all, your gut instinct is honed through life experience. And who can you trust more than yourself? There are just two problems with basing decisions only on gut instinct.
When instinct is unreliable
If you have spent most of your life 'resulting', then your gut isn’t a reliable indicator of what decision to take. We all have mental models and biases that are influenced by our conditioning and surroundings. Our biases can masquerade as a gut instinct to mislead us. This is particularly harmful when it comes to evaluating people who are dissimilar to us.
So what should you do? Obviously, there are many methods that people use: lists of pros and cons, decision trees etc. One additional recommendation is to assign probabilities to the options that you list. You may not know the exact number, but a rough estimate helps. Let’s walk through an example:
Suppose you are offered a job in Kolkata. Should you take it? There are four options:
- You could love the job and Kolkata
- You could dislike the job but love the city
- You could love the job but hate living in Kolkata
- You could dislike both the job and the city
In order to minimise the risk, you could visit Kolkata to get a sense of the city’s vibe. But day-to-day living is very different from visiting a new place. Go ahead and assign probabilities for the options above based on self-knowledge. What do you know about your own adaptability to a new place? What aspects of the new job excite you? Do you seek adventure and new opportunities? While not perfect — after all, no one can perfectly predict the future; thinking through the process of assigning probabilities, helps clarify your thinking and preferences.
If you are totally stuck, remember “Via Negativa” — think of the things that you absolutely don’t like or want to do. Sometimes the path forward is by clarifying the deal breakers.
Decision-making is an essential life skill. We have been doing it since birth. Some intentionality and reflection on past decisions can help sharpen our present capabilities. Now go ahead and make that decision you have been putting off!
(The author is a global social entrepreneur)