Do you have a logical framework for decision-making?
I remember when I bought my first house, it was a big number and took up all my savings to buy it so I was nervous, but I made a spreadsheet, ran the numbers and all sort of scenarios and in the end ‘trusted the numbers’ to go ahead.
Then other times, I make decisions that make no rational sense whatsoever, and every logical part of my brain tells me ‘no’ but somehow ‘gut feeling’ wins over and I go with my gut feeling even though every logical/rational way I look at it gives a different answer. Sometimes, I try to analyze why I do something trying to uncover some hidden reason and fail to find any reason why I should choose the decision I made.
Do you act rationally? Or go with gut feelings? Or some mixture? Does it vary depending on whether it is big/financial e.g. buying a house, quitting a job? I’m talking about decisions which have a big consequential effect (not what to have for dinner etc.)
I think you first need to define what you mean by the opposite, because while thinking about it I found that ultimately there’s always a weighing system in decision-making.
If you’re talking big things then “irrational” decisions may fall into the “not Rachel” category.
At one point in time, identify who I think I am, define what I want my goals to be and where my boundaries are.
Define a broad set of beacons that signal whether I am on the general direction I wanted to or not. Such beacons can be “being overly happy” or “being overly tired” or “being fluent in German by that time” or “feeling I always have to think about money” vs “feeling like I don’t have to ask mysef if I can do what I want to”.
If the negative beacons light up, no positive beacon lights up or I feel unhappy in my life for an extended period of time, revisit 1.
Keep who I think I am in mind, keep an eye open for the beacons, try to aim toward the positive ones, do a financial assessment for major financial matters and mostly go with my “gut” feeling once I am convinced enough to feel confident making a choice.
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In some situations, when I know deep inside what I want to do but won’t admit it on the surface, making a choice can mean closing all other opportunities until I only have the door I wanted to go through open before me so that I go through it. (Manipulating myself is a big part of how I drive myself in life).
For exampe, for a recent resignation without another job lined up, my main project when I took this job was to use it to have the salary to get financing on a home project.
My beacons were:
making progress with the home project (project, budget, permit, subsidies, financing, hiring the contractors, doing the works) → this had not happened after 1.5 years and I am still stuck after a misunderstanding with my architect.
having good life habits (sleep, cooking, exercising) → this keeps being a problem and I can’t manage to put myself in a mental space where I consider I can make that an actual priority. I also always feel tired after work and can’t find energy to do anything else than binge browse.
I should not ever leave a job without the next opportunity paned out (contract signed if it is another job).
The first two seemed not to pan out so I made a financial assessment, decided I could live a few months without a salary and had a few good options open to make that time worth it both for my life and financially and so gave my letter despite it going against one of my rules and a few colleagues giving signals that the job market wasn’t as good as it used to be (turns out I don’t know how they conduct their searches because it’s still a market heavily tilted toward candidates rather than employers).
My contract will end at the end of the month, I have a few applications that are going well for jobs I think I might enjoy and I have plans for using my time in the unlikely but very happy event that I don’t find a job immediately so I’m happy with my decision for now.
Edit: a trick I’ve developed to see what I truly want: flip a coin. If my reflex after one flip is “let’s do it best of 3”, then the result I had isn’t what I wanted and I should do the other thing/something else. If I’m happy with the result and don’t want to flip the coin again, that is what I wanted to do.
The flip a coin thing is something I picked up years ago, can’t remember whether it was a book or film, it said “flip a coin, you’ll know what you want before it falls to the ground, if you still don’t know then the choices are either equally bad or equally good”.
I often find myself using the minimax framework to make decisions
Ie dont focus on trying to determine which option gives the max return if all works out, but which option gives you the least regret if things dont work out => minimax = minimize your maximum regret
What I do is I spend countless hours obsessing and studying the problem, then at some point in the future I make the choice all of a sudden, hoping that my gut had by then duly processed all the information I fed it in the studying phase. Worked decently so far for me but I’d recommend revisiting the data gathered before acting
Or, as one reaction to the youtube video articulates well: “Life begins just on the other side of not giving a fuck.”
I can absolutely attest to that. It was my (almost) life long dream to come to Switzerland ever since I started coming here in my early 20’s for alpinism efforts (when I was still in shape and a daredevil). I tried so hard to find a job in Switzerland and it never worked out. I gave up, and 6 months later I was in a final round interview where I asked about the odd reference to multiple locations for the role and the nervous reply I got was “actually, we’d like to move the role to Switzerland, would you be OK with that?” - I gave a dry “sure, I’d be open for that” answer and left the building cheering in my head. Got the job, the relocation, all the benefits of Switzerland (incl. meeting my now wife here plus a few more months and we’ll have our first child!), and all is good.
Congratulations: and a tip: do everything you want to do now before the kid arrives: go to the fancy restaurant, travel, etc. as afterwards it is much more difficult and you have much less energy. Just ask yourself if you were forced to stay at home on the sofa for the next 2 years, what would you want to do beforehand.
Thanks! Most of the adventurous travel has already been ticked off earlier in life (I still have Sudan high on my wish list, but not once I have a little one under my responsibility) and years of intense business travel has made me less eager to travel anyway. I enjoy just spending time at home now so no big change for when the small one arrives!
But yes, my wife already warned me, we’re going to be exhausted once he’s with us!
I’m looking forward to it - a different phase in life - more focus on quality of living, less on the never ending rat race.
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