When I was recently explaining to someone that I had a tough choice to make they said "hey this is what you need to do, take your two options, write them at the top of a piece of paper, one on each side and then write the benefits of each underneath, assign a number value to them and then presto, all you have to do is total up each option and... DECISION MADE.
I'm sure you've heard of this scenario, too, and honestly it feels a little like what a "life coach" might tell you to do. I can recall shortly after I learned this formula at a young age it became quickly apparent I could simply twist the numbers to alter the outcome, heck I even remember totaling up the numbers before and then simply realizing that's not what I wanted and doing the opposite.
So if it's not already obvious, I'll come out and say, I find this formulaic like system for making decisions lame and weak. It's akin to those secret stock pick formulas you can buy from infomercials, if it was ACTUALLY revolutionary and useful it would be THE WAY. I don't use it for two reasons, first it pretends, or rather I should say people use it to pretend
I'm sure you've heard of this scenario, too, and honestly it feels a little like what a "life coach" might tell you to do. I can recall shortly after I learned this formula at a young age it became quickly apparent I could simply twist the numbers to alter the outcome, heck I even remember totaling up the numbers before and then simply realizing that's not what I wanted and doing the opposite.
So if it's not already obvious, I'll come out and say, I find this formulaic like system for making decisions lame and weak. It's akin to those secret stock pick formulas you can buy from infomercials, if it was ACTUALLY revolutionary and useful it would be THE WAY. I don't use it for two reasons, first it pretends, or rather I should say people use it to pretend
to be objective because they've applied arithmetic to their decision and somehow we think anything that has a number value associated with it is objective. Second, it supports the concept that every decision "should" or even can be objective.
Let me explain what I mean with an example, someone was recently talking to me about how they've seen this system used in an candidate selection process during interviewing. Let's say you interview a guy named Seamus who stinks. A saavy number decisioner might conduct their assessment assign their values and pretend to be objective ignoring the fact that secretly their entire assessment is shaded by their utter abhorrence of stinky people, while if you start with the idea that subjectivity and irrational biases play an active role in the decision process, whether or not you choose to recognize them, you can begin by identifying and evaluating them: "this guy reeks so bad I can barely breath, so I know it's going to be hard for me to accurately assess him" and move on, or at least be aware of every influencing factor on the process as well as making those around aware of it.
Making a decision isn't clean or neat. It's surely not a science so pretending to be able to plug your options into a formula and just come out with an answer is absurd. It's a complicated, messy, subjective and organic. We should definitely keep that in mind when we're looking for the "right" decision.
Making a decision isn't clean or neat. It's surely not a science so pretending to be able to plug your options into a formula and just come out with an answer is absurd. It's a complicated, messy, subjective and organic. We should definitely keep that in mind when we're looking for the "right" decision.
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