Life is filled with dozens of choices. Everyday we are faced with which shoes to wear, which street to take to work, and whether to eat a cheeseburger or salad at lunch. On a more impacting level we must consider what neighborhood is best for buying a home, where to send our kids to school, and ultimately, “Is this life-altering decision that I’m about to make the very best decision for my future?”
Text books may teach a step-by-step process for methodical decision making, and while I got an “A” in that class, I can safely say that I have never once employed any decision trees or “PrOACT” models for the hundreds of decisions I’ve made since I completed that class. Decision making, when done by the text book, is a far more complicated process of reasoning, deduction and mathematics sprinkled with quite a bit of risk potential. “People overweight the value associated with low variance (i.e., more certain) outcomes and underweight the value of high variance (i.e., less certain) outcomes” (Hill & Buss, 2010). That’s exactly what I was thinking before I made my last big decision! Okay, maybe not exactly. While the statement is true when it’s paraphrased that we tend to weight the outcomes in favor of the direction we subconsciously want to choose, I don’t think it’s important to analyze the best method to use in order to make a decision; that’s like deciding to decide upon something. Sounds exhausting.
If we’re already weighting the potential outcome of a decision so that it favors what we secretly desire, why are we still so stifled to make the decision already? No strategy or self-help book will guide us to make a decision any differently than our own “gut feeling”, so why not just toss a coin to make it final? And with current technology and the ability to deliver content virtually anywhere and anytime, any necessary research should be easy to conduct on the fly to support an “educated” decision. So whatever it is that’s forcing you to go left or right, use the method makes you feel the most comfortable, but by all means, make a decision and be sure it’s the right one for you.
Hill, S. E. and Buss, D. M. (2010). Risk and relative social rank: positional concerns and risky shifts in probabilistic decision-making. Evolution and Human Behavior. Volume 31, Issue 3. May 2010, 219-226. Retrieved February 8, 2011 from http://www.sciencedirect.com.dml.regis.edu/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T6H-4YW66DK-3&_user=1922016&_coverDate=05%2F31%2F2010&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000055361&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=1922016&md5=c761a09af1bcf37dd1bac4df3465e302&searchtype=a
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