My wife and I play a game where we each pick 3 movies we would be down to watch, put them on a numbered list, then roll a die. It's kind of silly, but it actually helps a lot making decisions.
Aug 1, 2022·edited Aug 1, 2022Liked by Rob Henderson
I do something similar whenever I have to make a decision between two roughly equal options. To avoid analysis paralysis, I flip a coin, and (nominally) commit to taking whatever result comes up. However, *if I feel any doubt or misgiving at all* about the result that does come up, I (actually) commit to taking the other option. In this way, I short-circuit analysis paralysis by forcing a decision, but also don't ignore any deep internal misgivings that might be driving "analysis paralysis."
I like this. When leading engineering teams making multimillion dollar decisions we use a decision matrix: Some number of aspects, weighted by importance multiplied by a comparative rating. Add up the scores. Either option A or B wins.
But before the decision is final I ask the team, “Are you comfortable with this decision?” If yes, and 80% of the time the answer is yes, write it up and move on.
For the other 20%, we go back and find that the weighting for aspect C or whatever was too high. We adjust it and get a different winner. And the team feels comfortable. Is this really a feeling-based or objective process? Hard to say. I have yet to be displeased by the outcomes, however.
Oh, and during the pandemic lockdown the six of us came up with movie recommendations. Everybody got two vetoes. From the list of survivors we rolled dice to decide the movie of the night. Was generally ok. I wish that I had figured out how to get more vetoes, however!!
Sometimes the length of time spent making the decision can be part of the enjoyment of whatever is chosen. My son and I have planned three trips for every one we've taken and we both have tremendous fun in the planning and debating process.
Visiting various colleges with your children is another example where the effort significantly overshoots the expected differences in outcome, but, again, the process is valuable in itself.
Both my examples are as a parent of now adult children (who I think are older than you are!). So, maybe there's a general "process" exception to parent/child decision making. Probably also for engaged or married couples.
Reading this, I immediately recalled the college selection process (when comparing similarly ranked schools), but agree with you (and Rob) that there can be value in overthinking some of these decisions because it can force you to illuminate what you value/want/prioritize. It can also bring kids to understand that what they make of a given school will also play a large part. If you like being a parent, are not totally exhausted by this point, and have the time/finances/ability to make these trips- it is a great way to have a lot of substantial conversations on the road with your kids.
I liked this piece because it confirms my long standing belief that hard life decisions really should be that hard because you are basically weighing two roughly equal expected outcomes. The decision its itself is far less important than what you do once the decision is made. I am talking about decisions like what job to take, who to marry and where to go to college.
Now, there can be exceptions: if the time spent making the decision is really spent casting aside illusions about what kind of person you are or someone else is, then it is probably time well spent.
DW, I think that time taken to decide who to marry is indeed well worth it. You need to understand your own deepest beliefs as well as your soon-to-be spouse’s.
If you believe, for instance, that each person is a unique, infinitely valuable part of creation and therefore you want a gaggle of children, but your almost-spouse believes that mankind is a cancer on the planet’s surface perhaps this is not the right spouse for you. There are probably 20 or so issues like that which I think need to be explored and weighed prior to making what is (hopefully) a life-long commitment. That takes some time.
FWIW, I am not suggesting taking such decisions lightly, only that if they seem hard, (i) they probably have roughly equivalent expected outcomes (in the judgment of the decision-maker) and therefore (ii) spending time agonizing over them probably adds little value.
I see your point. My counter is that for very important decisions the effort to understand factors that are not commonly discussed, but potentially really important, needs to have time and thought allocated.
I see marriage as one of those decisions. However, I may be out of step with modern society. I see marriage as a singular event. Man and wife swear by all that is holy to exclusively love, honor and cherish each other as long as they both shall live.
To me it is a tragedy (for the couple, their kids and society) when a marriage dies. It is a foreseeable tragedy if the couple rushes the decision to get married.
DW, I don’t see you advocating rushing the decision. But I advocate careful exploration of this decision- and lifelong, faithful marriage.
There are times when spending a long time on a decision will have a significant impact on the outcome. For example, many products on Amazon seem equally good on the surface, however, only after reading the reviews and watching Youtube videos about those products one could discover what that product is really like.
This is something i've had problems with, so it makes a lot of sense to me. Especially with vacations, i'll think and procrastinate for way too long, and I think it is BECAUSE they all seem like good options. So it's like man I really want to maximize what I can do and not pick the less good option. But I can see that it probably isn't worth spending so much time on such decisions. In general it seems like it's better to try things and learn from mistakes, rather than paralysis by analysis as you say.
This also seems like it could have some parallels to things Jordan Peterson has discussed, about how much of a difference there is between someone who is in the 99th percentile versus 99.9. What a massive difference that is. Or with sports, the difference between say Lebron or MJ compared to someone who is just an all-star.
I would be very wary of extrapolating the findings of those studies to any real-life decision making. Sure, I take a second longer to choose between a roughly equal amounts of dots in a study where I feel the need to perform well. That doesn't mean I deliberate too long on life questions.
And I don't share your intuition that it's necessarily irrational to take a little longer on roughly equal options. I can tell you in a heartbeat if I prefer to read 1984 or The Little Firetruck that Could, but I would take a few moments more to choose between 1984 and The Lord of the Rings. Both will give me enjoyment, but they are still quite different experiences. One is considerably longer than the other, for instance. It makes sense to introspect a little about what fits most into my life right now.
"Irrational" isn't meant to be disparaging. In the social sciences, esp. economics, "irrational" usually means a departure from the model that humans behave in a way that provides them with the greatest amount of utility. Of course, certain behaviors and preferences can be irrational yet adaptive. One of the great things about being human is having full awareness that something is rational yet doing the opposite on purpose.
My wife and I play a game where we each pick 3 movies we would be down to watch, put them on a numbered list, then roll a die. It's kind of silly, but it actually helps a lot making decisions.
I'm stealing this.
I do something similar whenever I have to make a decision between two roughly equal options. To avoid analysis paralysis, I flip a coin, and (nominally) commit to taking whatever result comes up. However, *if I feel any doubt or misgiving at all* about the result that does come up, I (actually) commit to taking the other option. In this way, I short-circuit analysis paralysis by forcing a decision, but also don't ignore any deep internal misgivings that might be driving "analysis paralysis."
I like this. When leading engineering teams making multimillion dollar decisions we use a decision matrix: Some number of aspects, weighted by importance multiplied by a comparative rating. Add up the scores. Either option A or B wins.
But before the decision is final I ask the team, “Are you comfortable with this decision?” If yes, and 80% of the time the answer is yes, write it up and move on.
For the other 20%, we go back and find that the weighting for aspect C or whatever was too high. We adjust it and get a different winner. And the team feels comfortable. Is this really a feeling-based or objective process? Hard to say. I have yet to be displeased by the outcomes, however.
Oh, and during the pandemic lockdown the six of us came up with movie recommendations. Everybody got two vetoes. From the list of survivors we rolled dice to decide the movie of the night. Was generally ok. I wish that I had figured out how to get more vetoes, however!!
Sometimes the length of time spent making the decision can be part of the enjoyment of whatever is chosen. My son and I have planned three trips for every one we've taken and we both have tremendous fun in the planning and debating process.
Visiting various colleges with your children is another example where the effort significantly overshoots the expected differences in outcome, but, again, the process is valuable in itself.
Both my examples are as a parent of now adult children (who I think are older than you are!). So, maybe there's a general "process" exception to parent/child decision making. Probably also for engaged or married couples.
Good post in that you made me think!
Reading this, I immediately recalled the college selection process (when comparing similarly ranked schools), but agree with you (and Rob) that there can be value in overthinking some of these decisions because it can force you to illuminate what you value/want/prioritize. It can also bring kids to understand that what they make of a given school will also play a large part. If you like being a parent, are not totally exhausted by this point, and have the time/finances/ability to make these trips- it is a great way to have a lot of substantial conversations on the road with your kids.
I liked this piece because it confirms my long standing belief that hard life decisions really should be that hard because you are basically weighing two roughly equal expected outcomes. The decision its itself is far less important than what you do once the decision is made. I am talking about decisions like what job to take, who to marry and where to go to college.
Now, there can be exceptions: if the time spent making the decision is really spent casting aside illusions about what kind of person you are or someone else is, then it is probably time well spent.
DW, I think that time taken to decide who to marry is indeed well worth it. You need to understand your own deepest beliefs as well as your soon-to-be spouse’s.
If you believe, for instance, that each person is a unique, infinitely valuable part of creation and therefore you want a gaggle of children, but your almost-spouse believes that mankind is a cancer on the planet’s surface perhaps this is not the right spouse for you. There are probably 20 or so issues like that which I think need to be explored and weighed prior to making what is (hopefully) a life-long commitment. That takes some time.
FWIW, I am not suggesting taking such decisions lightly, only that if they seem hard, (i) they probably have roughly equivalent expected outcomes (in the judgment of the decision-maker) and therefore (ii) spending time agonizing over them probably adds little value.
I see your point. My counter is that for very important decisions the effort to understand factors that are not commonly discussed, but potentially really important, needs to have time and thought allocated.
I see marriage as one of those decisions. However, I may be out of step with modern society. I see marriage as a singular event. Man and wife swear by all that is holy to exclusively love, honor and cherish each other as long as they both shall live.
To me it is a tragedy (for the couple, their kids and society) when a marriage dies. It is a foreseeable tragedy if the couple rushes the decision to get married.
DW, I don’t see you advocating rushing the decision. But I advocate careful exploration of this decision- and lifelong, faithful marriage.
There are times when spending a long time on a decision will have a significant impact on the outcome. For example, many products on Amazon seem equally good on the surface, however, only after reading the reviews and watching Youtube videos about those products one could discover what that product is really like.
Good point, though the point in the post is about weighing options that you can be reasonably confident are roughly equal in value.
This is something i've had problems with, so it makes a lot of sense to me. Especially with vacations, i'll think and procrastinate for way too long, and I think it is BECAUSE they all seem like good options. So it's like man I really want to maximize what I can do and not pick the less good option. But I can see that it probably isn't worth spending so much time on such decisions. In general it seems like it's better to try things and learn from mistakes, rather than paralysis by analysis as you say.
This also seems like it could have some parallels to things Jordan Peterson has discussed, about how much of a difference there is between someone who is in the 99th percentile versus 99.9. What a massive difference that is. Or with sports, the difference between say Lebron or MJ compared to someone who is just an all-star.
I like restaurant menus with fewer choices! I can’t stand reading a book before dinner : )
Decisiveness = impetuosity. We distinguish based on results, which are affected by chance?
I would be very wary of extrapolating the findings of those studies to any real-life decision making. Sure, I take a second longer to choose between a roughly equal amounts of dots in a study where I feel the need to perform well. That doesn't mean I deliberate too long on life questions.
And I don't share your intuition that it's necessarily irrational to take a little longer on roughly equal options. I can tell you in a heartbeat if I prefer to read 1984 or The Little Firetruck that Could, but I would take a few moments more to choose between 1984 and The Lord of the Rings. Both will give me enjoyment, but they are still quite different experiences. One is considerably longer than the other, for instance. It makes sense to introspect a little about what fits most into my life right now.
"Irrational" isn't meant to be disparaging. In the social sciences, esp. economics, "irrational" usually means a departure from the model that humans behave in a way that provides them with the greatest amount of utility. Of course, certain behaviors and preferences can be irrational yet adaptive. One of the great things about being human is having full awareness that something is rational yet doing the opposite on purpose.