
Ask HN: How do you make life's decisions? - codesternews
Hi HN,<p>I felt I am very poor at making decisions. I have made very poor decisions in past.<p>I felt I left things till last moment and unable to make decisions. I fear a lot about what will be good for me and unable to make decisions.<p>Please advice me.
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veddox
There's a couple of rules that I have been following, more or less
consciously, for the past few years:

1) Seek advice from people you respect.

2) Don't let fear take your decisions for you: Will you regret (not) doing
this?

3) If you're thinking about taking a risk: How bad is the worst-case scenario,
and how likely is it? Even if it's bad: Would it be worse not to have tried?

4) Think through your options carefully, but recognize that for many
decisions, you will never reach absolute certainty. Learn to live with the
concept of sufficient certainty.

5) Take a decision and run with it. Don't keep second-guessing yourself. Learn
from your mistakes, but don't beat yourself up about them, especially if they
were only evident in hindsight.

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afarrell
Book recommendation: Decisive by Chip & Dan Heath

Its a book about how to make better decisions more confidently, both as an
individual and as a group. It has a clear framework that presents actionble
tips and exercises you can apply in situations. The writing style is a good
mix of explanation and anecdotes and is fairly readable.

More general book recommendation: Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.
It presents a mental model of how to understand your existing reasoning and
perception processes.

Also, if you're having trouble making a choice, consider messaging a friend
and asking them "hey, I'm trying to make a heavy life decision. Can I take you
out to dinner and just talk out my thoughts with you?" Try to be clear about
how much you want them to just listen, how much you want them to help you
clarify your own thoughts, and how much you want them to give you
recommendations.

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technobabble
Disclaimer: Annecdotal answer, your mileage may vary.

If it's a bigger decision. I assign two decisions to the flip of a coin. The
actual outcome doesn't matter. Instead, pay attention to your reaction to the
coin flip.

~~~
perilunar

      “Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,
      and you're hampered by not having any,
      the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find, 
      is simply by spinning a penny.
      No - not so that chance shall decide the affair
      while you're passively standing there moping; 
      but the moment the penny is up in the air,
      you suddenly know what you're hoping. ” 
      ― Piet Hein

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hvass
I second reading Decisive.

If I were in your shoes, I'd do the following:

1) Sit down and write down your "poor" decisions. How could you have prevented
them? What information was missing? Could you have known this piece of
information in advance if you sought it out? Some of this will help you unpack
how much it's you and how much it's situational.

2) Ask your friends about your decision-making style and ask for blunt
feedback.

3) Ask yourself how much you should have listened to other people vs how much
to yourself? You might need to calibrate your ego/confidence--you might be too
trusting (or not trusting enough of yourself)

\--

For future decisions,

1) Try to make them rationally and not out of emotions. This is tricky because
you have to trust your gut, but your gut can be just fear and anxiety.

2) Most important thing: How reversible is a decision? What is the downside?
What is the upside? Never, ever make a decision that has a chance of ruin.

3) Always ask: How is this decision wrong? Always be able to articulate for
each option what are the downsides. No decision is perfect but you have to be
able to weigh the downsides, and also see the problematic aspects of each.
This is critical if you fall in love with one answer to a fork on the road.

Hope this helps! And do read Decisive!

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ytNumbers
Since you feel you have poor judgement, I recommend you try these steps: 1)
Find some smart friends. 2) When you need to make an important decision, ask
your smart friends for advice. 3) When multiple smart people are giving you
essentially the same advice, take their advice.

When it comes to advice, "Wise men don't need it, and fools won't heed it. And
those who want it the most like it the least."

~~~
veddox
Yes, yes, yes! Taking advice is incredibly important, and a trusted circle of
advisors absolutely invaluable. And don't only include your own buddies in
this circle: Reach out to older people and ask them about their experiences.
Why repeat the same mistakes the previous generation made?

Just one thing in your comment I strongly disagree with: "Wise men don't need
[advice]" In my experience, the wisest people I know are the ones most often
asking for advice... Or, as King Solomon put it: "The way of a fool is right
in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice." (Proverbs 12:15)

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phakding
Take a decision. If that turned out to be a good decision, think back and
remember how you took that decision. If it turned out to be a bad decision,
remember how you took that decision. Learn from your mistakes and soon you
will be an expert decision maker.

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wsc981
For me, I regard my life kind of like a business. As such I have a strategic,
tactical and operational plan. These plans operate on different schedules. My
strategic, long term plan is where I picture myself in perhaps the next 10-15
years. My tactical plan is where I picture myself in about a year. And my
operational plan dictates my day-to-day actions. Occasionally (perhaps a few
times a week) I reflect on my long term plans.

In the end life never really works out as planned, but as some wiseguy once
said "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything." You kind of have to be
ready to adapt or change your plan.

To give a more concrete example: for the last 10 or 15 years I've been
thinking about emigration. Initially my eyes were kind of set to South
America. Chile seemed kind of interesting. So I was kind of orienting myself
to moving there are some point. Still it seemed hard, but at least there was
some goal to work towards.

Then about 5 years ago I got a chance to freelance. Freelancing in my country
when working in IT means earning much more money and having more control over
your spending. During this time I also started to have this dream of working
for myself one day, working on my own projects.

After 2 or 3 years of freelancing I met a Thai woman in The Netherlands.
Through her I got some interest in Thailand and Thai culture. This caused me
to go on holiday in Thailand. In Thailand I met my current girlfriend and I
decided I would take a sabbatical there, so I could experience how I would
enjoy life when living for a longer time in Thailand. The freelancing allowed
me to build up quite some savings so this wasn't an issue for me. And I could
work on my own projects as well.

This was a very enjoyable time and I decided I would emigrate to Thailand.
With my girlfriend I've got a daughter now and we've also built a house
recently. As it stands now it seems I will emigrate to Thailand in June. I've
also worked on getting a remote job. I am hoping I will only have to do part
time remote work and can focus more and more on my own projects. And hopefully
in the future dedicate myself on working full-time on my own projects,
provided they give me income or I can build up enough savings to have a decent
living on the profits. I believe this should be achievable in maybe the next 5
years.

Most important decisions I made in the last years were all guided by my plans
(and most importantly my long term plan). I believe people need to have these
kind of plans to make good decisions for their life. From what I've seen,
people that don't have a long term plan for their life, they just seem to live
day to day without a clear purpose.

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kleer001
Your life may be too messy. Probably start with cleaning your room up and
going from there. Good luck, be brave!

~~~
ManlyBread
What's up with this kind of non-advice always being the highest scored answer?
It's not even an issue with HN, I see this behavior all over the internet.

~~~
afarrell
It is solidly actionable advice. Cleaning your room does several things:

\- Removes visual noise from your field of view

\- Reinforces the notion that you have control over some things within your
environment.

\- Reinforces the notion that you have a right to take care of your own sphere
of life and it is worthwhile to do so.

\- Gets you up and moving, which can reduce anxiety.

So to answer your question: it gets posted because the people posting and the
people upvoting believe that it is advice. This probably is a frustrating
answer. If you could provide more detail about why you think it is non-advice,
we might be able to give a better answer.

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bsvalley
You need to know your ultimate/achievable goals in life, then you need to list
them on a piece of paper. It sounds so obvious but that is where it all
begins. The order may be important but that’s where the trick is. So, it feels
like you keep making bad decisions in life? Well, now that you’re aware of
most of your big goals, it’s time for you to learn how to visualize things
ahead of time and how to connect these goals all together in a bunch of
different orders. Remember, you’re chasing that list of big goals. This alone
will help you focus a lot more and will force you to look beyond short term
thinking. Life is there to trick you by telling you to do a lot of weird
things. Go to college, pay your bills on a monthly basis, get married before
you get old, go move to these expensive places for better jobs opportunities,
etc. It requires you to re-prioratize things, to think long term, to be able
to work backwards towards a global solution. You’re like a Chef working at a 5
star restaurant trying to create a new menu. You have the ability to create
amazing receipes with a bunch of unexpected ingredients. The order matters
sometimes but most of the time, it’s just in your head. If an unexcpected
event happens, try to fall back into that original list of ultimate goals. Re-
think on how your new/current situation could lead you to your goals. Who
knows? Maybe on day you’ll learn something new. You will want to add a
complete new goal to your list. But before doing so, you need to look how it
fits with the existing goals... is it breaking certain milestones? Then maybe
you need to re-prioritize, remove old goals, etc. Or maybe it’s just a short
term thing which gets you excited in the moment...

For example, let’s say you want to have a lot of money, no boss, you want to
be married, have kids, awesome friends and a big house by the beach. You hate
your current job and you have a 30 year mortgage. You’re single looking for
someone but you’re not confident enough to go talk to girls because you feel
like you’re a below average guy. You just lost your job because the company
you believed in originally went out of business. You are forced to sell your
house. What does it mean? Chaos? Hmm... pull out your list of ultimate goals
and take a look at it. See? Your house was not by the beach, you were a slave
to the system so you had lost your freedom and flexibility to accomplish your
remaining goals. So that chaos would look more like an amazing opportunity to
re-group and to take a turn towards your real goals. Move places, go to
another country. Let’s say you live in the US, go to thailand for example by
the beach. It’s cheaper.. you’ll be a foreigner over there so you will jump
from being below average in your current circle to being exotic. Special,
noticeable, etc. I will stop the story here.

Bad choices are for those who forget that roads are all interconnected.

