How to always make the right decision

We all know the pain of walking down a street with your mrs, deciding where to eat for the night.

You walk past two restaurants which seem nice, with a few empty seats out the front, but the voice of indecision tells you to continue walking around the corner. Because maybe there’ll be a better restaurant a few steps away.

So you walk around the corner, realise it’s a dead end, decide to return back to the first restaurants you saw only to realise all the seats are taken and your indecision got you nowhere but tired legs and an angry girlfriend.

We face micro decisions like these every single day. But oftentimes we face decisions which are much more urgent.

Should I marry this person?

Should I take the job?

Should I trust him?

Should I quit everything I’m doing and travel the world, stop off in Colombia to give that girl I clearly fancy some flowers and see if we can get married in 3 months time? (Awkward look)

Anyway…

Fortune favours the decisive, and being able to make decisions is a skill which will prove invaluable in your general well-being and success.

But how can we make sure we always make the right decision?

Well… I’m glad you asked.

In the next 10 minutes I’m going to share the key insights from Forensic psychologist Laurence Allison’s book decision time, which has literally changed how I approach all decision making in my life for the better.

We’ll cover the 2 main barriers to good decision making, how to understand our own psychology and how to utilise the STAR method to make ANY decision flourish, whether it be choosing where to eat for dinner, who to marry or what career path to take.

The 2 main barriers to good decision making:

The first barrier to good decision making is the most cognitively demanding thing of all; redundant deliberation.

This is where you obsessively think about a decision without acting upon the information you have.

You fall prey to the cognitive bias of thinking more information will help you make a better decision when really no more information will help you.

Allison says it takes self-awareness to recognise this loop and you need to just act once enough information has been gathered.

“Deliberating without arriving at a solution is simply running as fast as you can to stay in the same place.” - Laurence Allison

51% certainty = make the decision.

The second barrier to good decision making is implementation failure.

Otherwise known as making a decision but not following through on the plan.

And this is where stress is highest; the gap between deciding and acting. (Imagine a parachute jumper, their stress is highest when they’ve committed to jumping but there’s still time for them to back out).

“For a decision to be meaningful it must be acted on.” - Laurence Allison

If you’re at risk of implementation failure, you’ll need to map our the decision with the specific actions you need to take in order to follow through on it.

The second step to overcoming these biases is to understand your individual psychology.

Know thyself

(1) Know your biology:

A study showed the effect sleep deprivation can have on decision making.

Sleep deprived soldiers were ordered to fire blanks at moving targets. But little did they know the targets were actual humans.

60% of the soldiers continued shooting and 40% stopped shooting but only after one soldier recognised the targets were real people.

Understand; the worse your health during decision making the worse your decision outcome will be.

To conceptualise this, consider acute and chronic strain.

Acute strain is felt in the moment after an event occurs (such as the adrenaline rush of fight or flight).

In this case you’ll need to breathe, go for a walk, calm your physiology down and then revisit the situation. (Think: we have heat of the moment murder vs first degree murder to accommodate for this!).

Chronic strain refers to deeper health problems such as diseases, bad lifestyle and addictions.

If you have time, optimise your mental health before you make an important decision.

(2) Are you a maximiser or satisficer?:

In decision making there are two types of people.

Maximisers who want their decision to be perfect and satisficers who want their decision to be good enough.

Psychology shows maximisers have less self-esteem, are less happy and are more likely to suffer from regret and procrastination due to their unrealistic expectations.

So to get a hold on which one you are, ask yourself:

• How often do you read the whole menu in a restaurant?
• How often do you imagine a perfect future?
• How often do you surf for ages before picking something to watch on Netflix?

Note: maximising isn’t always a bad thing. But you need to realise when you have the opportunity to do so.

(3) Values:

Values are key in guiding our decision making.

In the book he gave an example of a soldier who, after a 24 hour fight with the Taliban, was ordered by his leader to go out into the mountains with his team and do a body count to report back to HQ.

But, reflecting on his value of protecting his team, he refused despite the general berating him and shouting in his face for disobeying him.

To make any big decision, you must know and rank your values in order of importance.

You need something higher than you in the moment of decision making in order to decide with clarity.

To understand your values, check out this short 6 minute video.

So now we’ve covered the importance of self-awareness, let’s cover the STAR method to help guide us when making any decision.

STAR MODEL:

(1) Stories & situations

We love stories. And we use them to make sense of the uncertainty around us.

Uncertainty over which decision to make, how to follow through or whether everything will turn out to be a complete disaster or not.

In the book, Allison illustrates when we’re confronted with a situation our mind is like a pint glass full of water (stress).

Usually we try to gain situational awareness over the situation and gather more information into our already full glass, causing it to spill over.

Instead, we need to empty our glass, by distancing ourselves from the situation, and then to refill it.

Emptying our cup first also allows us to combat the primacy effect, where we prioritise information we receive first.

When life gets too complex; simplify + cast away

Allison highlights the importance of stories for providing us with structure and an understanding of the world around us, and how we can utilise something called grim storytelling to make better decisions and combat this feeling of uncertainty.

First of all, the key to becoming a decision making master is to ask one question before anything else:

“How much time do I have to make this decision?”

Then, if you have time, think through the absolute worse and best possible outcomes to your decision.

But don’t fall for the trap of picking “the best” option. Instead Allison argues we should focus on picking the ‘least worst’ option amongst our options, because picking ‘the best’ option is unrealistic.

Lastly, whenever something happens to us which forces us to make a decision, we must gather the story by asking:

• 1.) what has happened?
• 2.) why has it happened?
• 3.) what are no more than three plausible outcomes of what is going to happen next?
• Then you need to consider:
• 1.) do I have to decide now?
• 2.) if I don’t, how much time do I have to firm up which of these scenarios is the most likely?
  

(2) Time mastery

Over the last few millennia, human brains have evolved in a way that’s increased the neural pathways of the posterior area of the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex (vmPFC) which is an area associated with decision making.

This gives this brain area a lot more connectivity to the anterior region.

Because information about events in the near future is located in the posterior region. And information around future events is located in the anterior region.

So the brain is primed to respond more effectively to information about our current events than events occurring in the future.

We are biased to prioritise the present, which isn’t always the best for decision making.

We all have different concepts of time.

Some of us are more future focused than present focused.

To get an understanding of this: grab a stopwatch and click it.

Then stop it once you think a minute has passed.

Foxtrot thinking:

To become a time master, you can use foxtrot thinking.

After understanding how much time you have to make the decision, act with the framework of slow slow fast fast.

Engage slow thinking to ponder how much time you have, to distance yourself from the situation and to reconnect with your sacred values.

Engage fast action when making the decision after ‘enough’ information has been gathered.

To put this into a thought experiment:

Think back to decision you made in the past.

How would they have turned out differently if you’d have taken longer or shorter to make the decision?

When considering the time you have when making a decision, ask:

• Do I have time to gather information?
• Will gathering information help me make a decision?
• Is there any more information I need to gather?
• Is it possible to gather that information within (a reasonable amount of) time?
• Is the information I’m gathering actually helpful?
• You must think of the least worst first before the worst worst appears without your control
  

We can never be 100% sure we’ll make the right decision. And sometimes unforeseen circumstances will pop up to challenge us into becoming flexible around a previous decision we’ve made.

Hence being able to adapt ourselves to the circumstances at hand is crucial.

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(3) Adaptation

In the 1990s an American social psychologist called Arie Kruglanski coined the term need for closure and how some people rank high, medium or low in regards to it.

Need for closure describes our tendency to want to complete our goals, have structure and be decisive.

For example, someone with high NFC organising a party for people with low NFC would be a disaster. As the organiser is likely to want everyone to be there at a certain time and will be shocked as everyone arrives an hour late.

People with high NFC have a high need for order, predicability, avoidance of ambiguity, are more closed minded and engage in more black and white thinking.

If you are a person with high NFC, here are some tools for challenging in regards to decision making:

1.) Seek the opposite (think of the reasons you should/shouldn’t make the decision you’ve decided)

2.) Treat all info as it matters at first (don’t fall for the primacy effect)

3.) If it’s not black and white it’s not black and white (search for the grey areas & tradeoffs - accept the complexity of choice - x has happened before and resulted in y, but what if it results in z?)

4.) Take advice from other people

5.) Interrogate your information (do you have the full picture? Is some info inconsistent / contradictory? Have you tested what you assume to be true?)

But all of this information counts for nothing if we do in fact make the wrong decision and don’t know how to revise it.

We’ll also need to know how to remain resilient in the face of adversity and pivot on our decision if need be.

(4) Revision & resilience

Imagine you’re a train operator in a cctv room.

There’s a train heading north and is approaching a junction where you’ll have to direct which of the two tracks it takes.

On track 1 there are two kids on it. On track two there’s 1 child on it.

What do you do?

Do you divert the train towards the 2 kids or the 1?

The likelihood is in this situation you’d do nothing.

Why?

Because we humans prefer inaction to proactive action.

We feel more proactively involved when we initiate action in opposition to when we sit back.

So in this scenario, your brain would trick you into believing if you do nothing you’re not responsible and can avoid feeling guilty.

But doing nothing is still doing something. Besides, this ploy from your brain is an attempt to avoid loss aversion.

But the part of the brain which mediates loss aversion is the same part which produces emotions such as guilt and disgust.

So even if inaction provides you with short-term escape, get ready for the waves of guilt in the future.

Procrastination in your choosing = circumstance will make the choice for you.

Before we cover how to be resilient in the face of making the wrong decision, there’s one more bias for us to cover.

Status quo bias.

This is where we enact the same actions we’ve always taken as opposed to doing something new.

Ask yourself:

• Are you doing something for the sake of not doing something else?
• Or are you doing that thing because it’s genuinely brings positive benefits in your life?
  

Understand:

Status quo thinking isn’t always bad. If you take the same walking route each day that can free up mental energy to do other things.

But taken to its extreme, it will plague your decision making with rigidity and stubbornness. So be careful.

Finally,

When you’ve made your decision, you’ll need to revisit it every now and then to consider if it’s still serving you.

Ask:

1.) What is your reason for persisting? Or reason to no longer persist?

2.) Is the goal you’re currently striving for one that is truly important to you?

You need to value your investment but not be so tied to it that you blindly stay invested in it.

On the other hand, you’ll need to develop the quality of grit to stay persistent with a decision which is right for you.

Grit is defined as:

“Passion and sustained persistence applied towards long term achievement, with no particular concern for rewards or recognition along the way.”

Allison defines resilience as:

“The ability for an organism to remain centred during disequilibrium.”

And he argues there are 4 resilience pillars we can rely on once our decision has been made:

• Physical health
• Purpose
• Fun and joy
• Feedback from others

So, in summary:

• Beware of redundant deliberation and implementation failure
• Know your psychology: what do you value? How is your health?
• Distance yourself from the situation to refill your cup
• How much time do you have to make this decision?
• Seek the opposite information to what you currently have
• Once you’ve made the right decision, remain resilient and gritty
  

To round this off, here are a few principles/mental models I refer to when making a decision of any kind:

•⁠  ⁠If its not a fuck yeah, its a no

•⁠  ⁠Consider fully & act decisively

•⁠  ⁠Oftentimes our best course of action appears objectionable at first step. In fact, it always does.

•⁠  ⁠The best way to make the worst decision is to ask everyone’s opinion

•⁠  ⁠When something is for you, it will bring clarity and alignment, not chaos and confusion

•⁠  ⁠If it costs your mental health then it’s too expensive

•⁠  ⁠Sometimes it's best to lie low, to do nothing but let the winter pass

•⁠  ⁠Just because you can doesn’t mean you should

•⁠  ⁠Don’t confuse what you want with what you need. You should be absolutely willing to make a less exciting decision if it’s within your long-term best interests.

•⁠  ⁠Never take advice from someone you wouldn’t trade places with

•⁠  ⁠Never take direction from someone who’s never been where you’re going

•⁠  ⁠A problem postponed is a problem extended