When I first started this Substack, I mentioned that it would consist of personal essays and a bit of a research journal. Come to think of it now, I realised that I had done too much of personal essays, yet not enough research journal. Today’s post hopefully will challenge that and mark the start of sharing more about decision-making!
Some of you may know me from my past identities — such as a writer or someone who works in the youth advocacy field. While they were my true identities back then, these days I work as a researcher in the field of behavioural economics, meaning that I’ve spent most of the last decade studying how people make decisions After a year of graduate programme and almost four years of doing PhD in this field, I’m thinking of sharing some of the lessons learned, beginning with the frameworks I used to make decisions.
Do you ever find it difficult to make decisions? Decisions can be big and small. Sometimes we need a long time to make huge decisions, such as who to marry (or whether we’d like to get married or not), which house to buy or rent, or what kind of career we’d like to have. It’s normal - and even important! - to take time in making these grand decisions.
Nonetheless, sometimes we spend too much time trying to decide on the small stuff as well, such as which clothes to wear, which restaurant to pick, which route to go through. The time we take to make these small decisions eventually add up and take too much of our time, resulting in less time for things we actually enjoy or care about.
Steve Jobs was famously known for always wearing a black turtleneck and a pair of blue jeans in public-facing events. I think the practice has been followed by several figures, because wearing the same clothes everyday means there are significantly less decision to make:
Not having to choose what to wear to which events
Not having to choose which clothes to buy
Although we are not Steve Jobs, we can have more time for the things we actually care about by having (or choosing) a system that works for us in making decisions, especially the smaller ones that should not take too much time.
Most of us don’t actually have a decision-making problem. We have a self-knowledge problem — and a brain that wasn’t built for the number of choices we now face every day.
We’re told to “trust our gut”, but sometimes our got could be unreliable when we’re tired, overloaded, or emotionally activated — which, for most of us, is most of the time. We look at two options, feel nothing clear, and call ourselves indecisive.
The frameworks are built on a simple idea: good choices come from knowing what you actually want, having a few reliable tools for hard moments, and checking in with yourself often enough that you don’t drift.
There are two parts of this post:
Part 1: Clarifying What You Actually Want
Four exercises to uncover your real values.
Part 2: Five Frameworks for Hard Decisions
Tools grounded in behavioural science, with prompts to apply each to a real decision.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.