
How to Make a Big Decision - dsr12
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/opinion/sunday/how-make-big-decision.html
======
runesoerensen
_" In July 1838, Charles Darwin, then 29, sat down to make a decision that
would alter the course of his life [...] Should he get married?"_

Incidentally, Kierkegaard kinda tried to answer this question 5 years later in
Either/Or. A couple of related snippets:

 _" I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either
do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do
not do it — you will regret both"_ [0]

And a more long-winded version:

 _" Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry
or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s
foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh
at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a
woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang
yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that
too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way;
whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This,
gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy"_ [1]

[0] [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/28780-i-see-it-all-
perfectl...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/28780-i-see-it-all-perfectly-
there-are-two-possible-situations)

[1][https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7141047-marry-and-you-
will-...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7141047-marry-and-you-will-regret-
it-don-t-marry-you-will)

~~~
bopbop
That's an excellent quote, thank you.

Having said that, my take on that quote is that it seems a bit of a cop out -
a way of absolving oneself of the consequences of ones actions.

You may well regret both, but perhaps you will also enjoy one, or you will
regret one less, or regret one more, or one has ramifications which due to
your (hypothetical) selfish nature you may regret but are better for society,
etc etc etc.

Or is it meant to be more of a call to action as opposed to inaction? Make
decisions, because you are damned regardless, so at least add your own breath
to the winds of fate?

~~~
emodendroket
Most of us end up constructing a narrative where whatever choices we made were
the right ones, unless they go so disastrously wrong that we can't fool
ourselves. So why agonize so much?

~~~
mercer
I think that's true, but only part of the time, and very dependent on context.

Many, if not most people also experience periods where narrative is negative,
and where we conclude that the choices we made were all the wrong ones. And
quite likely most of us live with a combination of the two, depending on what
area of life this 'narrative' occupies, depending on how much our self-respect
or self-hatred is tied up with these areas, etc.

The core problem, I think, is not primarily that we construct all sorts of
highly subjective, distorted, self-serving or self-harming narratives, but
that we get too attached to them and desire these narratives to be consistent.

On the other hand I've met people (few of them though) who don't seem to have
this desire to construct and maintain narratives, and while they do generally
seem to live happier lives, some of them are perhaps a bit _too_ lacking in
introspection/narration and suffer from that.

------
jedberg
The 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](http://www.nber.org/papers/w22487)

~~~
Steve44
Two personal anecdotes related to this.

I've made what seem to be four major career decisions in my life. Aged 14 at
school I was in tears because I couldn't do one of the O levels I desperately
wanted, the school pretty much forced me onto this new Computer Studies course
they'd just started running. As a direct result it grabbed me and I worked in
the games industry for a good few years.

In my late 20s a friend offered me a role earning a lot more money wearing a
suit in the IT department of an insurance company. A very tough choice as I
loved the industry but after a couple of weeks of heart wrenching I took it;
absolutely no regrets 25 years later.

Now at work unless I can decide using experience or hard facts I'll either
choose not to decide or do a coin toss. It infuriates some people but if I
can't sensibly analyse it any more and my crystal ball isn't working that day
then random is far better than wasting time thinking about it.

One other thing to help make a quick decision is to toss a coin and whilst
it's in the air think how you want it to land and then go with that. The
limited time forces you to choose what is generally the route you
subconsciously want.

~~~
r_smart
My advice to friends who are chewing on some major decision is always to tell
them to flip a coin. It's the perfect way to shut off their brain, which isn't
getting them anywhere (or they would have decided already!), and get them to
go with their gut. The important thing isn't to go with the result of the
flip, but use it to help reveal your preference in a decision you either can't
analyze or where the predicted outcomes are more or less equivalent, but
different.

------
aedron
I know people here aren't big on religion, but just as a perspective (no worse
than Jeff Bezos I guess): In Islam there is a certain prayer you are supposed
to say before making a big decision. You ask God's guidance for it, that
you'll do what's good for you in this life and the next, and so on.

The funny thing is that when you do that, you almost always make up your mind
immediately. It's like deep down you already know what the right thing is, and
the act of explcitly stating the 'business requirements' (doing the morally
right thing, for the long term good) just makes it obvious - no divine
intervention needed! I'm pretty sure it's just a clever mental hack, but it
does work.

~~~
Nition
It's funny how these tricks really do work, where you can skip the
deliberation and go right to the decision you've already subconsciously made.

Another similar one is to flip a coin and see if you're disappointed in the
outcome or not (or alternatively, think about which coin outcome you're hoping
for before you look at the result).

~~~
mongol
Yes the coin thing is really good. If you want to flip again, then you know
what option you prefer.

~~~
Pamar
I have written a bit about this matter, from the point of view of using
I-Ching as your "decision support tool"... [https://www.pa-
mar.net/Lifestyle/I-Ching.html](https://www.pa-mar.net/Lifestyle/I-Ching.html)

~~~
vfinn
Thanks. I find it funny that some people who consider themselves rational and
open minded are very easily discarding methods like this as superstition
without hearing out what you actually have to say. I believe Tarot cards are a
somewhat similar way of gaining understanding of your own preferences.

~~~
Pamar
In my opinion yes, _any kind of oracle_ that gives you ambiguous answers is
more or less equivalent: I Ching for me is convenient because it gives a
relatively compact result (while doing tarot reading requires you to pore over
a dozen or so cards and all their relationships, which to me risks to muddle
things up).

------
jonathanstrange
This is an interesting story, but it's also odd that it doesn't mention any of
the standard work on decision making (e.g. Savage), no multiattribute decision
making/multiattribute utility theory and all the variations thereof such as
lexicographic decision making, nontransitive preferences, generalized additive
decomposition, and other nonstandard models of decision making (like e.g. in
Fishburn's seminal work or Schmeidler's work).

There is consensus in the decision making literature that the direct scoring
method described at the end of the article is flawed for measurement theoretic
reasons, and a vast range of elaborate preference elicitation methods have
been developed. There is also work in philosophy on _value structure_ that is
partly relevant, though not yet at the level of economic modelling.

In a nutshell, the article is interesting but sound decision making is much
harder and more complicated than the author portrays it. I just wanted to
mention this for people who aren't aware of it, there is a vast literature in
this area.

 _Edit: Although I prefer pseudonymity I 've decided to give it up on this
opportunity for some shameless self-promotion. If you're working in
nontraditional decision making or the ethics of risk, please check out our
conference:

[https://sites.google.com/view/lvu18lisbon](https://sites.google.com/view/lvu18lisbon)

We've just recently extended the deadline until 16.9.2018._

~~~
aplummer
I just wanted to say j strange is my favourite novel, read it at least 10
times!

~~~
vfinn
You mean the novelist(?) Ian J. Strange? Which novel?

~~~
markc
The novel is "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell"

------
rosstex
This deserves the king of making decisions:
[https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/09/marriage-
decision.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/09/marriage-decision.html)

~~~
teabee89
Interesting WaitButWhy, but in my opinion, the real big decision is about
children, not marriage. The difference of responsibility is light years apart.
Marriage can be undone.

~~~
ivankirigin
Kids and money are the biggest reasons for divorce. Get on the same page about
both while you're dating. If someone can't handle an open conversation, they
won't make a good partner.

~~~
q-base
Could you elaborate on the open conversation?

~~~
sjg007
Probably means an open and honest conversation. Question vis-a-vi: Do you want
kids? If we can't have kids without IVF do we do it? If IVF with our own
gametes fails do we use donors? What if we cannot afford it? Do we adopt? Will
you be an equally contributing parent? How will we raise them? Religion?
Vaccines? Education.. All those things... It's a lot to parse. Expectations of
parenthood.

------
GuiA
Alan Watts:

 _“You do not know where your decisions come from. They pop up like hiccups.
And people have a great deal of anxiety about making decisions. Did I think
this over long enough? Did I take enough data into consideration? And if you
think it through, you find you never could take enough data into
consideration. The data for a decision for any given situation is infinite. So
what you do is, you go through the motions of thinking out what you will do
about this.

Worriers are people who think of all the variables beyond their control, and
what might happen.

Choice is the act of hesitation that we make before making a decision. It is a
mental wobble. And so we are always in a dither of doubt as to whether we are
behaving the right way, or doing the right thing, and so on and so forth…and
lack a certain kind of self-confidence. And if you see you lack self-
confidence, you will make mistakes through sheer fumbling. If you do have
self-confidence you may get away with doing entirely the wrong thing.

You have to regard yourself as a cloud, in the flesh. Because you see, clouds
never make mistakes. Did you ever see a cloud that is misshapen? Did you ever
see a badly designed wave? No, they always do the right thing. But if you
would treat yourself for a while as a cloud or wave, and realize you can’t
make a mistake, whatever you do, cause even if you do something that seems to
be totally disastrous, it will all come out in the wash somehow or other.

Then through this capacity, you will develop a kind of confidence, and through
confidence, you will be able to trust your own intuition. But this is the
middle way, of knowing it has nothing to do with your decision to do this or
not, whether you decide you can’t make a mistake or whether you don’t decide
it, it is true anyway, that you are like cloud and water. And through that
realization, without overcompensating in the other direction, you will come to
the point of where you begin to be on good terms with your own being and to be
able to trust your own brain.”_

~~~
btbuildem
Ahhh, thanks for that.

------
revazquez
I'm currently doing YC Start Up School with a company set out to help solve
the problems mentioned in the article and other related ones, for work teams.

Besides making it easy for every invited member to submit and compare
alternatives, it allows teams focus discussions by structuring decisions in a
visual, clear way (weighted pros & cons, multiple weighted decision criteria,
etc.), contrast opinions of different contributors and manage a configurable
the process to drive engagement.

I hadn't heard of the concept of "premortems" but the decision structures are
flexible so any decision could be configured to support them (either one
"premortem" per alternative or one per alternative/participant pair).

If anyone is interested in a demo of Resolutt, please let me know.

~~~
ridruejo
+1 for Resolutt, we are trying it at Bitnami and though it is still early days
it is very promising ([https://resolutt.com/](https://resolutt.com/))

------
js8
I came to conclusion that the smaller the obvious difference between the two
options, the less the choice matters.

The actual decision can matter a lot, but if you don't know, then it,
unfortunately, depends on luck.

We tend to worry about the future, so we tend to think about decisions by the
way they will affect us in the future. But the truth is you can have all four
options, including obviously correct decisions that lead to small or no
difference in outcome, as well as very unclear decisions that lead to big
difference in outcome.

I think you should just focus on the decision itself, make sure you have all
the information, and if the two options come very close to each other, just
make the call, regardless how big the influence of the decision on your life
is going to be.

------
nickjj
For all big decisions I always end up using Socratic questioning. It never
fails. It's like a pros / cons list but on steroids.

I wrote about it once in the context of using it to potentially learn a new
technology, but it applies to everything.

You can check that out at [https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/would-socrates-use-
docker-tod...](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/would-socrates-use-docker-today)

------
drawkbox
Jeff Bezos "Regret Minimization Framework" [1]

A regret minimization framework "I wanted to project myself forward to age 80
and say, 'Okay, now I'm looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the
number of regrets I have,'" explains Bezos. "I knew that when I was 80 I was
not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to
participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a
really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn't regret that, but I knew
the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would
haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way it was an
incredibly easy decision."

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwG_qR6XmDQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwG_qR6XmDQ)

~~~
BeniBoy
It seems reckless to get your life advice from the richest person in the world
without taking survivorship bias into account[1]

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias)

~~~
rohit89
Not sure that is applicable here. His advice is basically to minimize
potential regret. A variation of "better to try and fail than never try at
all".

~~~
inimino
...from someone who tried and succeeded.

------
fzeroracer
My 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.

~~~
sjg007
One other thing to keep in perspective is that since you grew up poor, you
know how to live and handle it if it were to happen again. That should give
confidence. Still I think having a savings buffer helps immensely.

------
lifeisstillgood
For me there is also a meta-decision - should I actually be making a decision
about this now?

For example the marriage decision is easy - there are probably less than 5
points in everyone's life where that decision is even entertained. Because
there are only a few times when you are not married and dating someone who
might be the one.

However the divorce decision is ... well a lot more frequent because you are
_always_ married and will then over a 50 year period find pints where The Big
Decision is in your mind.

A default go for it is not always the right thing

Same for leaving your job, selling your house, etc

You might be better off yes - but you could find yourself making the same
decision 3 months later

------
jillesvangurp
There are a couple of related topics:

1) Complex decision making in stressful situations. When you are under stress,
you won't be thinking properly or have time to weigh all the pros and cons.
However, you can plan ahead and consider what you would do under particular
circumstances. Having a plan means you can act, right away.

2) Avoiding taking premature decisions. This helps you avoid the stress and
distractions that come with deciding things that are not immediately relevant
and frees you up to focus on more urgent things. Deal with it when you need to
and when you have all relevant facts but no sooner.

------
koliber
Cool article. I've been giving this a lot of thought lately.

Another exercise that I do is, for each option, I ask "What's the worst that
can happen, and what will I do when it does?"

It turns out, a lot of times, the worst is not that bad, and correcting it is
simple, should it arise. Often, the choice is simply not that important and
each alternative is OK. This makes is much easier to make the choice.

------
alexpetralia
I think it's important to make a distinction between "decision parameters" \-
factors relative to _this_ particular decision - and what I call "decision
hyperparameters" \- factors which are relevant to all decision-making.

For example, you can be evaluating the purchase of a new car, but if you have
slept poorly or haven't eaten recently, you may not be in the best state to
make a wise decision.

We often check the parameters for each decision, but not as often
hyperparameters (how much time do I have to make this decision? how reversable
is it? how am I feeling? how much domain knowledge do I have?). I think a
concrete checklist for major decisions is quite useful - we abstract up from
the decision and ensure that our _decision-making process_ is sound.

For the interested, I wrote about this here:
[https://alexpetralia.github.io/2017/11/27/NL-2017-11-27.html](https://alexpetralia.github.io/2017/11/27/NL-2017-11-27.html)

------
mswen
In the past year I have worked on a side project web application that provides
a tool for managing and calculating a multi-factor value assessment for major
decisions. The twist is that it collects the assessments of each decision
option against the decision factors from whatever advisers or stakeholders you
the decision master invite to participate. During collection of the
assessments each person is also invited to indicate how confident they are
about each assessment and to add a qualitative comment as well.

In particular I have thought of corporation using this as a way to gather
input from all the persons that interview a candidate for a job.

Anyone on this thread interested in seeing a demo?

~~~
chrisweekly
Yes! Link please

~~~
mswen
It is still rough around the edges but I will see if I can get it deployed in
the next week or so. I will let you know when it is up.

------
lordnacho
> Over the years, Professor Nutt and other researchers have demonstrated a
> strong correlation between the number of alternatives deliberated and the
> ultimate success of the decision itself. In one of his studies, Professor
> Nutt found that participants who considered only one alternative ultimately
> judged their decision a failure more than 50 percent of the time, while
> decisions that involved contemplating at least two alternatives were felt to
> be successes two-thirds of the time.

I'm sure something gets lost in journalistic summary, but isn't there an
alternative explanation for this? If you're contemplating a choice, and there
are many things that seem plausible, it's because there are many acceptable
outcomes. So it's not because you've thought about a lot of choices that you
make a good choice, but that if something is going to go well, chances are
there's many ways for it to go well?

------
justinzollars
> 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.

~~~
peacemaker
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.

~~~
thegayngler
I generally just start down my favorite path and then use the additional data
to decide if I should switch paths or make that 51st path that I didn't think
about when I had less data to go off of. Being flexible has generally worked
in my favor.

------
julienchastang
One Founding Fathers of the United States, Benjamin Franklin, also used the
pro/con technique [1]. This topic also seems to touch upon game theory. The
Optimal Stopping problem comes to mind. [2]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#Decision-
mak...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#Decision-making) [2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_stopping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_stopping)

------
advertising
When I can’t decide I tell myself I will leave it to a coin flip and commit to
that outcome. As soon as I see what side the coin landed on I know exactly
what I wanted. This usually works anyway.

------
hack3rbr3ws
"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."

#ThingsEnderWigginKnew For those who never read "Ender's Game", the main
character must play an unwinnable game where he is given 2 choices where both
decisions end in death. He manages to find a hidden third option (killing the
Giant) that allows him to continue playing.

------
ArcMex
My 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.

------
sendos
Relevant: [http://andrewoneverything.com/post/43840346900/we-will-
alway...](http://andrewoneverything.com/post/43840346900/we-will-always-have-
psychics-and-fortune-tellers)

I don’t think there will ever be a way to make a “big decision” with thorough
analysis that will make you certain you made the right choice. There are too
many variables to ever know for sure the “right” choice

------
dsego
A good book on the topic of relationships is ”Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to
Stay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Help You Decide Whether to Stay In or Get Out of
Your Relationship”.

The book replaces the balance-scale approach (pros-versus-cons) with a series
of diagnostic questions ordered so the most obvious issues come first. If at
any point the answer is against the relationship, there is no need for further
diagnosis, the decision has been made.

------
mnw21cam
One method I sometimes use to work out whether I have an underlying feeling
about a two-way decision is to get a coin, assign heads/tail, then toss it. On
seeing the outcome, observe to see if I feel disappointed. This seems to be a
good way to discover whether I had a preference that I hadn't realised I had.

------
neilwilson
That seems like a process of whatifevery that is going to lead to a "cling to
nurse for fear of something worse" outcome the majority of the time.

I prefer Branson's approach: "Screw it, let's do it".

------
known
It should be devoid of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry)

------
sjg007
Some tv show had a good quote the other day.. "There's two constants in life,
buyers remorse and sellers regret..." This was in the context of a house I
believe.

------
cruelmelody
If we knew which decisions to make, life would be far too scripted and easy.
This was an interesting read.

