How to Make a Big Decision
nytimes.com
How to Make a Big Decision
1–10 of 97 posts
Re: How to Make a Big Decision
#2This deserves the king of making decisions:
https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/09/marriage-decision.html
Re: How to Make a Big Decision
#3This deserves the king of making decisions: https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/09/marriage-decision.html
This was great, thanks for sharing!
Re: How to Make a Big Decision
#4The Freakonomics guys did a paper on this. Basically, their conclusion was just do it, make the big change.
Their experiment was based on coin flips and self-reported happiness, but basically those who made the big change after the coin told them to reported being substantially happier, and if you dive into the data, you'll see that those that went with the biggest decisions (quit a job, get married) saw a double digit improvement in happiness.
Paper is here: http://www.nber.org/papers/w22487
Re: How to Make a Big Decision
#5If we knew which decisions to make, life would be far too scripted and easy. This was an interesting read.
Re: How to Make a Big Decision
#6> The upshot is clear: If you find yourself mapping a “whether or not” question, looking at a simple fork in the road, you’re almost always better off turning it into a “which one” question that gives you more available paths.
I like this idea.
Re: How to Make a Big Decision
#7[deleted]
Re: How to Make a Big Decision
#8My decision making process touches upon some of the points brought up in the article. I often speak about how I grew up poor without many options available to me (well, options that led to me being alive) so once I started my career suddenly my options exploded. Now I had many difficult decisions to make.
My decision making process always involves multiple alternatives and backup plans. What if I got laid off from my job shortly after starting, what if I suffer from some medical issue later down the line, what if a better opportunity comes along etc.
This process helps assess whatever weaknesses a decision might have and also helps calm my ever-present sense of economic dread. It's much easier to make a big decision when you have multiple backups if life throws a few curveballs at you.
And as it turns out when I got laid off earlier this year being prepared made it a lot easier to deal with. I almost never make a major decision without considering multiple possible outcomes; outside of the one I had to make to start my career.
Re: How to Make a Big Decision
#9> The upshot is clear: If you find yourself mapping a “whether or not” question, looking at a simple fork in the road, you’re almost always better off turning it into a “which one” question that gives you more available paths. I like this idea.
Unfortunately that appears to be my natural inclination and now I'm facing a list of more than 50 or so "available paths". This can be equally as daunting as having no options and frankly it has led to decision paralysis.
Some might then say, "well, narrow down the list to 3-5 options". Well, how does one go about doing that? Am I to perform the pre-mortem and value analysis on all 50 of these potential options? Randomly select a few to discard (since having so many options suggests perhaps that all have enough benefits to be viable?), or maybe run some kind of "tournament" where I play off each option against one another, loser is discarded and we continue on until there is a winner?
I appreciate the article and will take some of its lessons into account but I'd love to hear what the author of the piece would think about my situation.
Re: How to Make a Big Decision
#10My process is evaluating the pros and cons of "which one" rather than "whether or not". While this piece is an opinion, it is nice to get some validation.