Making tough decisions

[jay gw]

Uh, don't know exactly how to ask this, but

do any of you have a way of making tough decisions? How do you make a decision when you don't have enough information, can't get information, can't predict the future....

There are decisions and there are DECISIONS. You know, "should I get married" or "what should I major in" or "should I have this baby". The kinds of things that if you do something wrong, you can't go back and change it.

Just wondering.

(not exactly religion but maybe it's philosophical. Didn't know where else to put it.)

[evildave]

The key to any decision (or 'DECISION') is simply to MAKE IT. In general, even the toughest of tough decisions are truly inconsequential. For instance, "Should I get married?" is an obvious one. If you find yourself so torn by the question, perhaps you should more closely examine your motivations to marry. Is it because you love and trust and respect and want to spend the rest of your life with him/her, or because "Me so horny!"? In general, your life will only be different, according to whether you marry this person or not. Not (typically) better or worse. Just different.

Any arbitrary means of making a decision is about as good in the long run as agonizing over it for weeks. If you are agonizing over it, you simply don't have enough information, and there are several ways to break the deadlock.

1. Get more information. Do some more research and try to be level-minded about it.
2. Talk to any other people involved in the decision.
3. Ask advice. Talk to family or close personal friends about your dilemma.
4. Roll the dice. Flip a coin. Flip open a book to a page at random and read a paragraph. Any other randomizer.
5. If all else fails, do absolutely nothing at all, and the problem will usually solve its self, one way or another.

Most importantly, once the decision is made, do not look back and torture yourself with 'what if' scenarios. If you were truly so deadlocked on how you should proceed, you honestly didn't know how it would turn out either way, you could fantasize yourself a paradise of "only if", but for all you know you'd have been run over by a bus the day after you made the other decision.

Life is fairly forgiving for every bad decision there is a remedy, and for every good decision there's a curse. Lots of marriages end in divorce. Lots of people change their major. Lots of people end up raising children they hadn't planned to. There are no permanent consequences, except death. Even with a child, you're more or less done in 20 years or so, as long as you do your job right. It's only ever really living the same life a little differently and making adjustments, and you'll make adjustments whether you change things in big ways or small ways.

[Dymanic]

Originally posted by jay gw

How do you make a decision when you don't have enough information, can't get information, can't predict the future.... I am convinced that the bulk of my decision-making takes place automatically and intuitively. The difficulty usually has to do with the degree to which I am willing to trust the process (I have, after all, frequently found my intuitition to be error-prone). What it really boils down to then is: how much time do I have before failing to act becomes a decision in itself? If an oncoming car is in my lane, my decision as to whether to swerve left or right will be handled reflexively. Waiting until a point of absolute certainty as to the correct choice might well be a fatally expensive luxury.

If I start feeling blocked, I like to remind myself that every single one of my ancestors had the ability to make this kind of decision with reliable enough results to avoid disaster for at least fourteen or so years.

[TragicMonkey]

It's easy. Flip a coin. When you get the results and then say "best out of three", it means that you really want to do the opposite of whatever the first flip gave you. You had already made the decision but hadn't realized it until then.

[Soapy Sam]

Start with n options.

Swither, dither, procrastinate and do nothing until n-1 options have lapsed.

Do what is now inevitable.

Promise to do better next time.

[Marquis de Carabas]

:confused: Do they not have Magic 8 Balls where you're from? :confused:

[Dymanic]

Of course, we all saw at once that this is actually a question about global warming, right?

[jimmygun]

Ask yourself..."Can I live with this decision?" meaning if I decide right and everything is aces yes, if I decided wrong can I continue as a person of my word, yes or no?

If for any reason you find yourself not sure that you can live with your own decisions then step away.

[jay gw]

Roll the dice. Flip a coin. Flip open a book to a page at random and read a paragraph. Any other randomizer.

Why would you want a randomizer? Several people mentioned coin tosses, but I can't tell if they're being serious.

So basically, none of you make decisions using any tools, or formal methods. Weird. I had expected something else.

I'm right back where I started. Thanks alot.

[TragicMonkey]

Originally posted by jay gw
Why would you want a randomizer? Several people mentioned coin tosses, but I can't tell if they're being serious.

So basically, none of you make decisions using any tools, or formal methods. Weird. I had expected something else.

I'm right back where I started. Thanks alot.

I was being serious. You could make lists of pros and cons, but they're all already in your head. Flip the coin, saying to yourself that you're going to abide by how it falls. When it lands, you will either feel relief, or immediately say "Let's try best out of three". Either way, your own reaction will demonstrate which alternative is the one you really want to do.

I'm not leaving it up to a random coin toss--I'm just using the coin to reveal the decision I've already made without knowing it.

[jay gw]

I'm not leaving it up to a random coin toss--I'm just using the coin to reveal the decision I've already made without knowing it.

How do you make a decision without knowing you've made it?

[TragicMonkey]

Originally posted by jay gw
How do you make a decision without knowing you've made it?

Hell if I can explain it. Shrinks would probably call it the subconscious. Or maybe it's just very fast spur-of-the-moment stuff. It happens to me quite frequently--I'll be considering a decision and boom, there it is. Maybe it's just going with instinct?

[Soapy Sam]

TM- Classic User Illusion stuff. Your brain is processing millions of bits of information per second, about 16 of them consciously.
Hardly surprising the answer is suddenly just there, in the spotlight. I often wonder who it is that decides I'm getting out of bed in the morning.

It is this single issue which makes me so contemptuous of empty argument about free will.

[jay gw]

It is this single issue which makes me so contemptuous of empty argument about free will.

What does that mean?

[Gulliamo]

I do not take the same "light" approach that many here do to decision making. I believe that decision making is a skill. And, like any skill, can be refined and gets better/easier with structured practice. If you would like references to the above please ask.

I believe that most decisions can and should fall into a structure that I learned in the military, aptly named "The military decision making process". Do a search for that phrase and you will find more info... I will summarize and give anecdotes.

It goes something like this...

Step 1 Receive the Mission
Step 2 Analyze the mission
Step 3 Analyze assets
Step 4 Gather intelligence
Step 5 Develop courses of action
Step 6 Analyze Courses of Action
Step 7 Develop the plan
Step 8 Develop a contingent plan
Step 9 Make the decision

I will elaborate on each...
1. Figure out that you have a decision to make. Should I buy the car?
2. What impact will the decision have? I will have a car and it’s payments or I will walk.
3. Do I have the money to buy the car?
4. Is this the best car at the best price? What are the ratings? What do my car expert friends think? What do my bus taking friends think?
5. I can take a loan or buy a monthly bus pass.
6. A bus pass would be cheaper, a car would be faster.
7a. I will take out a loan to buy the car.
7b. If the payments are overwhelming I will sell the car and buy the bus pass.
8. As Gulliamo Sr. always taught- "You make decisions and you live with them."

This approach has served me well. Tell me what you think...

[Dymanic]

Originally posted by Gulliamo

This approach has served me well. Tell me what you think...I think the military decision making process often leaves out the most important step: Define The Objective.
Current events contain some excellent examples of this failure.

[Gulliamo]

Originally posted by Dymanic
I think the military decision making process often leaves out the most important step: Define The Objective. I disagree. Defining the objective is step number one! Whether the objective is received from someone else in a military scenario or defined by circumstance or defined by yourself it is still step one.

I wrote:
Originally posted by Gulliamo
1. Figure out that you have a decision to make. Although I think Define the objective is more articulate.

Originally posted by Dymanic
Current events contain some excellent examples of this failure. Assuming you are talking about Iraq I cannot help but agree. It just goes to show that even the best system can be distorted by humans. Even our acclaimed scientific method is subject to human failures.

[Gulliamo]

Originally posted by Dymanic
I am convinced that the bulk of my decision-making takes place automatically and intuitively...
If an oncoming car is in my lane, my decision as to whether to swerve left or right will be handled reflexively. Some decisions must be made ahead of time (If a car enters my lane I will swerve right into the ditch rather than left into the oncoming traffic) and many more intuitively; but I do not believe this is the nature of the OP.

How do you make tough decisions? Did you instinctively decide what your collegiate major should be?

[Anathema]

In risk situtations, in which action must be taken without as much information as I'm "comfortable" with, I fall back on the old "worst case scenario". Take a look at the possible courses of action, and for each, determine what is the worst probable outcome of each. For each suboptimal outcome, can some mitigating strategy be employed? Or, can you handle the "worst case" as it is?

As long as the penalties of imperfect decisions are amorphous, they appear more daunting than they may actually be. Sometimes, you just have to work through the range of possible choices and outcomes, and determine which course will yield the best results ---- and have a "Plan B" if the defecation hits the venitilation.

[Marquis de Carabas]

Originally posted by Gulliamo

It goes something like this...

Step 1 Receive the Mission
Step 2 Analyze the mission
Step 3 Analyze assets
Step 4 Gather intelligence
Step 5 Develop courses of action
Step 6 Analyze Courses of Action
Step 7 Develop the plan
Step 8 Develop a contingent plan
Step 9 Make the decision

While I agree that is a good decision making process in general, I don't feel it completely answers the OP. (Though the OP is not mine, so whether that is helpful to jay is his *ahem* decision.) It seems to me the "tough" decisions are the ones where you've followed steps 1-6, but the course isn't clear. You've weighed the variables, thought about your overarching goals, but the final answer isn't available in some neat package.

To take your later college major example. Say my overarching goal is to make gobs of dosh. Well, Philosophy's right out the door, along with some others, but the field is still pretty wide. To arbitrarily narrow the field to two, let's say Law or Medicine.

Either will make me some fairly serious bank if I follow through, but which am I more interested in? Which am I more suited for? What about free time? When will I be able to retire? You get the idea.

All these questions, and more, can be researched according to the typical decision-making formula, but only up to a point. The future is too murky, too probablistic, too chaotic to make this decision with 100% confidence that it is the right one.

Any decision making faculty cannot be rules all the way down. At some point, as evildave said above, one just has to MAKE IT. Eventually, you have to execute, because you never have all the facts.

I happen to like TM's suggestion about the coin flips, but for a slightly different reason than he stated. I don't think it's so much that it shows us what we really want. It shows us what desire is currently in the driver's seat of the useful fiction of the self. It seems to me short-term desires would overrule long-term goals more often than not in this method. (Well, there's this really hot chick who's taking Pre-Law, so screw Medicine.) I think the use of the coin is good because it forces the decision. If all variables have been accounted for, and you're still unsure, why not just flip a coin? It's no less arbitrary than anything else one might do.

[Dymanic]

Originally posted by Gulliamo

Defining the objective is step number one!Should be step zero. A car isn't an end in itself, is it? (Well, I guess it could be, if what you're really into is cars).
Whether the objective is received from someone else in a military scenario or defined by circumstance or defined by yourself it is still step one.
The problem occurs when a political objective is recieved from some non-military person(s), and an attempt is made to act upon it as though it were a legitimate, well-defined military objective. We begin with the expectation that politicians will make good military decisions, and end up being disappointed when military personel in the field make bad political decisions.
Some decisions must be made ahead of time (If a car enters my lane I will swerve right into the ditch rather than left into the oncoming traffic) and many more intuitively; but I do not believe this is the nature of the OP.
I don't think you can really decide in advance how you will react in a sudden, life-threatening situation. You can sit back watching TV and say you would do this or that if you were the character, but my personal experience is that when the house is on fire, or someone actually sticks a gun in your face, or bounces your head off the pavement, it's no longer about deciding what kind of person you want to be, but discovering what kind of person you are.
How do you make tough decisions? Did you instinctively decide what your collegiate major should be?
A career choice (or any major life choice) based on inadequate self-knowledge is a shot in the dark; but unfortunately, sometimes taking your best shot is all you can do. How many people learned what kind of person they aren't by choosing the wrong major, the wrong career, the wrong partner? If we all lived to be two hundred years old, and could wait till fifty before starting college or having children, some of these decisions wouldn't be as tough, because by then we know more about ourselves.

Several of us are suggesting that trusting your instincts in these matters is absolutely the way to go, and I stand by that; but figuring out which one among a twitching bundle of instincts is the one to listen to is a problem that doesn't lend itself well to the scientific method. Talking things over with someone is an important part of the process for me. When I finally see the answer, I often realize that I knew it all along.

[Gulliamo]

Originally posted by Dymanic
I don't think you can really decide in advance how you will react in a sudden, life-threatening situation.True. But, if you talk (I know, this is anecdotal evidence) to enough Policemen, Firemen, soldiers, or even athletes they will often answer the question, "I simply fell back on my training." Or, "I didn't think, I just responded how I was taught." This tells me that, while it is impossible to predict exactly how one will react, you can at least prepare or train to increase the likelihood of a given reaction.

[Jellby]

Originally posted by jay gw
Uh, don't know exactly how to ask this, but

do any of you have a way of making tough decisions? How do you make a decision when you don't have enough information, can't get information, can't predict the future....

Whatever you do, never regret your decision.

Think about the issue, consider the information you have and take a decision. If, some time later, you think that it was maybe not the best decision, recall how you carefully thought about the problem and how you did what you thought what best then.

You can wish things would have gone a different way, you can be sorry it wasn't as you planned/hoped, but don't regret your decision.

PS. And with this post I say "hello" to the community :)

[alfaniner]

I heard that psychics and astrologers are really good at helping with this sort of thing.


(Sorry!) :)


Or, follow the Nike ads -- "Just Do It".


Are you more likely to be better off choosing one way or another?

[RamblingOnwards]

I guess it depends on what you consider a 'tough' decision.

Unless you're deciding whether to take a loved one of life support or the equivalent, most things allow you to change your mind if you get it wrong. Even if your decision ruins that particular situation, say you leave your partner and they don't want you back afterwards, the same decision will roll around again with a new partner. You can always go back to university.

First I look for all possible solutions, and add 'not making a decision' to the mix. For instance, in the decision 'BA or BSc', I added posponing my degree, never getting degree, getting both degrees, and finding a university that allowed me to mix them.

I decide not to make decisions until x date or event, and let time resolve some of the issues (the good old 'sleep on it' advice).

Of my options, I don't try to decide the 'best decision', but simply sort them into decisions that I can live with and those I can't. Of the decisions I can live with, I try to take an option that would make changing my mind easy, the 'middle' option (taking the maximum allowed courses of drama in my physics degree).

I use a couple of the hackneyed methods as well (what will the impact of each choice be on me one year from now? five years? twenty? When I think of decision x first thing in the morning am I excited nervous or depressed nervous?)

If at the end of your decision making process you still can't make up your mind, random is as good a method as any other, and much less stressful.

[c4ts]

Originally posted by jay gw
Uh, don't know exactly how to ask this, but

do any of you have a way of making tough decisions? How do you make a decision when you don't have enough information, can't get information, can't predict the future....

There are decisions and there are DECISIONS. You know, "should I get married" or "what should I major in" or "should I have this baby". The kinds of things that if you do something wrong, you can't go back and change it.

Just wondering.

(not exactly religion but maybe it's philosophical. Didn't know where else to put it.)

Well, I always open my Bible and do exactly what it says. This presented a problem when I opened to a passage about seed spilling when I was trying to decide where to have lunch, but it sure made me choose quicker. Anyway, the point is that the Bible has all the answers, just never any that apply or make sense without heavy interpretation so you might as well make alphabet soup and base your decisions off the letters you get in your spoon, then pretend the letters stand for words. Hmmmm... oh mighty soup, should I marry my second cousin? ... GFY ... OK, maybe that wasn't such a good idea after all. Maybe I'll go back to the Bible for answers... apparently I should not only marry my cousins, I should marry a hundred of them. I'm gonna need lots of wine at this wedding... better make that hard liquor and champagne...

[Gulliamo]

Not to criticize anyone's methods but I have to say that I expected to see a more structured "thought process" come out of a forum of thinkers. Maybe I am misinterpreting....

[c4ts]

Originally posted by Gulliamo
Not to criticize anyone's methods but I have to say that I expected to see a more structured "thought process" come out of a forum of thinkers. Maybe I am misinterpreting....

What, did you expect us to rationally assess our situations and weigh the possibilities against one another?

[Anathema]

Originally posted by c4ts
What, did you expect us to rationally assess our situations and weigh the possibilities against one another? It doesn't matter, your algorithm will always select the MPB....

;)

[Mercutio]

Originally posted by TragicMonkey
It's easy. Flip a coin. When you get the results and then say "best out of three", it means that you really want to do the opposite of whatever the first flip gave you. You had already made the decision but hadn't realized it until then. Do you remember where you learned this one? I do it to, and I know I read it somewhere. I also do it for others...if they ask me to help them decide, I flip a coin, then put it in my pocket without showing the result, and ask them "which side were you hoping for?" And of course, if there was no hoped-for side, I flip it again for real. As the good Marquis said, it is as good a decision as any under those circumstances. (and Guillamo, I only use this method after a more rational analysis is over, although that rational analysis can and does include the emotional aspects of the decision.)