Stop Making Bad Decisions...
Without Knowing You're Making Them
The best decision makers in the world make terrible decisions if they doesn’t know when they’re making a decision. This is a pitfall many of us fall into. We don’t even realize the thousands of decisions we make in a day. I see three types…
Mundane decisions… we don’t notice
Do I wear these pants or those? What’s for breakfast? Should I jaywalk or wait?
Slightly involved decisions… we might notice
Do I work now or later? What should I do at the gym? Where should I sit?
Fully involved decisions… we definitely notice
What should I study in school? Should I switch jobs? Should I ask her out?
Fully Involved Decisions
We usually have a semi-conscious decision making process for questions in the third category. That could be anything from thinking about it in the shower or talking it through with a friend to plugging a bunch of values into a spreadsheet.
We know we’re making a decision and we want to get it right. We create space between when we realize we need to make a decision and when we actually make that decision. And often, the more ‘serious’ the problem, the more space we create.
You don’t decide whether to marry your girlfriend the day you meet her, you spend at least a year making that decision. A lot of space for a big decision.
Mundane and Slightly Involved Decisions
Most of us don’t have a decision-making process for questions in the first two categories. We automatically answer. As soon as we notice a decision needs to be made, we make it. We don’t create any space to think. That’s actually a good thing for many decisions, especially in category one.
You don’t want to be standing around in the curb taking 60 seconds to decide whether to jaywalk or not, you’ll have missed your opportunity to act.
The problem we encounter is for decisions in category 2. These are questions that carry some more weight but we don’t recognize it. It’s usually situations that are forgettable if handled well, but become serious when handled poorly.
For example, imagine you’re hanging out with friends and you’re all giving one guy a bit of a hard time. Nothing brutal, just poking fun. But he’s starting to get emotional. He’s not laughing and having fun like the rest of you. If you change the conversation, nobody will recognize you made a good decision, it’ll be natural. But if you, without paying attention to the situation, keep giving your friend a hard time, you could potentially really damage that friendship.
People miss these situations because their emotions get involved. Either we are too angry, too sad or even too happy!
Good Decisions Are Prepared Decisions
In Clear Thinking, Shane goes into detail about creating space to make good decisions. The book has five major sections:
The Enemies of Clear Thinking
Building Strength
Managing Weakness
Decisions: Clear Thinking in Action
Wanting What Matters
The first three sections are all about what you do before you make a decision. It’s all part of the process of becoming a great decision maker. One of my favorite arguments Shane makes is,
“One reason the best in the world make consistently good decisions is they rarely find themselves forced into a decision by circumstances”
In other words, Positioning > “Smart”ing
We have three days until we officially dive into Clear Thinking. If you couldn’t tell from these emails, I’m beyond excited to start this journey with you guys. I’ve read and listened to probably close to a hundred hours of Shane Parrish in the past 18 months. He says smart things so you understand, not so he can sound smart.
Have a great day!
Your Friend,
Noah “BigNerd” Sochaczevski
MAJOR PS.
PS. I’m really excited to kick off with our first live meeting! It’ll be December 3rd @1pm - I’m not gonna make you come, you don’t need to. It’s meant to be a fun way to get to know other Big Nerds and discuss the ideas from Meditations we all just spent a month learning about. PLEASE RSVP HERE