And what to do about it
Photo by mari lezhava on Unsplash
In a just world, good decisions would always result in good outcomes, and bad choices would result in bad effects. But we don’t live in a just world.
Thus judging the quality of decisions based on the outcomes of those decisions is not an accurate way to determine if your decision-making is sound. So how do you know if you are making good decisions even when the outcomes are bad? And how can you make better decisions in the future?
Imagine John goes to the bar and has a few too many drinks and then decides to drive home. If John makes it home safely, does that mean driving drunk was a good decision?
Or think of Coca-Cola’s decision to release New Coke in the face of losing market share to Pepsi. The change was not a snap decision on the part of the Coca-Cola executives. Instead, the executives invested two years in “flavor engineering” and taste-testing to design a drink that outperformed Pepsi in the “sip test.” Despite all that investment of time and effort, New Coke was a failure. Does that mean it was a bad decision?
The tendency to evaluate decisions based on their outcome is known in psychology as the Outcome Bias. It is also known as the Historian Error because it is easy to look back from the results of history and judge the decisions that led to those outcomes. But it is not so easy to know the implications of decisions when making them.
Because we can’t know the outcome of our decisions, we need to focus on the methods we use to make the best decisions regardless of the result. How do we do that? By focusing on the process of making decisions and not by judging decisions based on their outcome.
People will become better decision-makers when they expect their decision to be judged by how it was made, not only by how it turned out.
— Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow
Ten steps to better decisions
Here is a ten-step process to help you make better decisions. I can’t guarantee you that following these steps will always produce good results. The world is a complicated place where randomness and external factors can thwart even the keenest judgment. The hope is that by following this process, you will be able to think methodically, avoid common errors, and be right more often than you are wrong.
State the question clearly.
Albert Einstein was fond of questions. The theory of relativity resulted from one question Einstein asked himself, “What if I rode a beam of light across the universe?” Framing this question in a novel way brought Einstein new insights that changed how we view the universe today. He summed up his approach to unraveling the enigmatic this way, “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask… for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”
The first step to solving any problem is to make sure you’re asking the right question. Take time to understand the issue you are facing. The Coca-Cola executives were answering the question of how to beat Pepsi at the competitor’s sip test. And they answered that question correctly. But the real question they should have been asking was, “What makes loyal Coke drinkers so loyal?” By answering the wrong question, they alienated their faithful customers.
Take time to look at the question from different angles and make sure you ask the right question. Don’t rush to an answer until you are sure you have the right question. After all, the correct answer to the wrong question is still the wrong answer.
Take stock of your overconfidence.
Overconfidence is a leading cause of errors in judgment. This is true in my field of medicine where physicians train to have good judgment. The main problems here are a tendency to use Heuristics (subconscious rules of thumb based on experience), premature closure, and confirmation bias.
As much as we want to believe that we decide via deliberate reasoning, the reality is that most of the decisions we make are snap determinations based on our experience. This is not all bad, as your snap judgments are often accurate. When you settle on the conclusion prematurely, the problem is you don’t stop to question if it could be wrong. Now you have decided without really thinking about it.
You compound this danger when you use Confirmation Bias to bolster your snap decision. You like to think you’re making a logical decision, but the reality is that you have already made the determination. Now you are cherry-picking the evidence to support your subconscious choice by accepting information that agrees with you and discarding all contradictory facts.
Recognize that overconfidence in your initial impression is a hazard. Ask yourself, “What evidence would make me reassess my choice?” Then, rather than look for information that supports your judgment, deliberately seek out evidence that you are wrong. And if you find that evidence, don’t discard it, but use it to question your assumptions and rethink your conclusion. Proving yourself wrong is never as satisfying as proving yourself right. Still, it can lead to much more effective decision-making.
Look at the situation objectively.
One problem with making decisions about your life is that they involve you. That means you have a vested interest in the process and the result. This personal stake can skew your thinking.
To avoid this mental trap, it is good to step back and look at the situation objectively. One helpful trick for pulling this off is to write about the situation in the third person. I will literally start an entry in my journal by writing, “Chuck needs to decide _______.” Then I write about my situation as if it is happening to someone else.
When you separate yourself from your situation, you can gain new perspectives and insights. So, make a habit of looking at your problems like an impartial outsider.
Reframe the problem.
How you look at the problem plays a significant role in the way you will respond to it. Imagine there is a medical epidemic for which two treatments are available. Researchers studied both treatments in groups of 600 people. The results showed that in treatment A, 400 people survived. While in treatment B, 200 people died. Which treatment would you pick? Most people go with treatment A because we see 200 deaths as bad. But the reality is, 200 people died in both groups — the results for treatments A and B are equivalent.
The above is an example of framing. How the information is presented influences how you perceive it, and believe me, the people delivering the data know that and take advantage of it. So you need to reframe the information you receive. Look for the bias in the presentation and turn it around to get the whole story.
Stop thinking about the problem.
Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is not to think about it. It sounds counterintuitive, but it is true.
In a study, students were asked to choose the best make from several car models. They reviewed twelve characteristics by which to judge those models. Then half of the subjects were asked to sit and evaluate the information while researchers gave the other half a distracting task to perform and then asked to make a snap decision. Who did better?
It turns out that distracted student’s snap decisions proved more accurate than the deeply considered answers. Does this mean you should make all your important life decisions off the cuff? Maybe. I realized that I would marry the woman who became my wife while I was on a long walk. I daydreamed about my possible futures, and I realized that the one common element in all those fantasies was the same woman. I never sat down and evaluated the merits of marrying her; I just knew that we would be married and have been for the last 27 years.
When you face a difficult choice, don’t decide. Instead, walk away and do something distracting. Play a game, read a book, chat with a friend or go to that old stand-by and take a hot shower. Rather than go to the decision, let the decision come to you.
Reflect on past mistakes.
Mistakes, we have all made them. That is part of being human, and you can’t avoid that. What you can avoid is making the same mistake more than once.
When you are making a decision, reflect on your past choices. What mistakes did you make in the past? Are you repeating any of those mistakes this time? What have you learned from your prior errors that you can apply to this situation?
As a surgical mentor of mine liked to say, “Experience is a fine teacher, but she charges a steep tuition.” You have paid that tuition with your previous miscalculations; you may as well take advantage of those costly lessons to do better in the future.
“You can never make the same mistake twice because the second time you make it, it’s not a mistake, it’s a choice.”
― Steven Denn
What if you did the opposite?
This one comes from entrepreneurs, author, podcaster, and life hacker Tim Ferris. He suggested doing the opposite of what you usually do, or what others do, for 48 hours. If it works, great! If not, you can go back to the old way with a new insight.
As Tim tells the story, he was just out of college and working in sales, where he spent his days cold calling executives and trying to sell them stuff. Like all of his coworkers, he did this from 9 am to 5 pm. So Tim decided to try making calls from 7 to 8:30 am and 6 to 7:30 pm. He found the “gatekeepers” that protect the people Tim wanted to talk to work from 9 to 5. Tim through to the executives directly by calling outside those hours, and his sales exploded.
Ask yourself what experiment in doing the opposite of your norm you could try for forty-eight hours. Then give it a go. You may find a good reason for doing it the usual way, but you may also learn that doing the opposite is a fast lane to new success.
Listen to your emotions; ignore your feelings.
When I was in medical school, I spent a little time with a dynamic neurologist and researcher, Dr. Antonio Demasio. At that time, he studied people with brain damage that disconnected the emotional and rational parts of the brain. It sounds like the perfect prescription for making rational decisions, but it wasn’t.
It turns out these individuals could do a great job explaining both sides of any choice, but they could not decide. We need our emotions to guide us to what is important in life. Knowing that choice A will lead to one outcome, and choice B to another is no help if we don’t know which product we prefer. We need emotion to give us that value judgment.
The trick here is to separate emotions from moods. Emotions are specific and transient responses to particular stimuli. Moods are more pervasive but vague feelings. Emotions bring you helpful information, while moods can color the information you take in and lead to poor choices.
The easy way to tell if you are experiencing a mood or an emotion is to give it a name. Emotions are easy to name, while moods are vague and difficult to pin down. So if an option elicits a feeling that you can name, then listen to that feeling. If you can’t put a name to the feeling, then you may be in a good or bad mood. In the latter case, it might be better to put off the decision until your mood changes.
Rather than being a luxury, emotions are a very intelligent way of driving an organism toward certain outcomes.
— Antonio Damasio
What would you tell a friend?
You would not yell at and berate a friend or loved one over a decision they made or are making. So why do you get down on and reprimand yourself? It doesn’t make sense, but we all do it, and it does not help.
When you find yourself becoming self-critical, try this trick. Imagine that it is not you, but a good friend who is facing your dilemma. What advice would you give them? What reassurance would you offer? How would you help them?
Not turn that around and offer yourself the same encouragement, sympathy, and wise counsel you would provide to a loved one. If your advice is good enough for someone you care about, it is good enough for you.
Consult someone who has faced the same decision.
One of the biggest problems in making decisions is that we are terrible at determining how we will feel about our choices in the future. Psychologists call this affective forecasting and research has shown that we overestimate how good or bad a change in our circumstances will make us feel. It turns out, humans are more resilient than we think and can rationalize most of our decisions.
Since you can’t accurately predict how you will feel in the future, how will you decide? The obvious answer is to ask someone who has been in your shoes. Did things turn out as they expected? Would they make the same decision again? Why or why not?
Interviewing someone who has been there is the best way to discover the reality of the situation. Look for someone you can ask, and don’t be shy.
Conclusion
Decision-making is hard. Many things can go wrong. Having a process that you work through to get to a decision will help you to avoid errors and make better decisions. Yet, no matter how good your decision-making process, not all of them will work out as you planned. You should expect this as the world is a complicated and random place. So take comfort that your decision-making process was a good one, even when the result is not what you intended. Learn the lesson and try again, but better.
