Decision Making, part 3

In previous post:

• what to do with non-binary decisions
• hints on staying on track
• healthy and helpful habits to develop
• refrain from multitasking

Back in the normal times, i.e. early January, 2020, I intended to begin this post with “Happy belated all sorts of New Year”, I’ve failed to finish it before Novruz, though there is still upcoming Songkran week so here goes with the somewhat sprawling continuation of my rendition of this set of videos.

Decisions, big and small, daily and once-in-a-lifetime, we are surrounded and bombarded with them constantly (though thankfully not as much as with neutrinos at 65 billion solar neutrinos per second per square centimeter). So how do we choose, where to begin, how to classify them and bring at least some sort of order to this? We have to be able to discriminate and prioritize, with priority meaning that, which has a predominant right on something, in this case — our time, attention and efforts.

Priorities could be momentary ones, as in choosing between daily tasks and their order of execution, and internal ones, i.e. one’s own convictions and beliefs based on which one makes decisions, that is what is important to an individual, their core directive, as it were. Internal priority might be something on the lines of “Freedom is more important, than order” and this statement manifests itself throughout an individual’s life in all sort of ways from what clothing one chooses to what kind of job they would prefer, with freedom being of paramount importance, above all else. Being aware of one’s internal priorities would be of great value as it will bring some clarity to an inner struggle, knowing what you really want deep down inside will simplify decision making process.

However in order to be of help, an internal priority should be an acknowledged, conscious one. Why then we generally tend not to tread this grounds, and avoid too deep an exploration, so to say, of our most essential features? Turns out that, more often than not, what we would call our most important priority in life is not as nice as we’d like to think. For instance, one might believe that having very well paid job is more important than having an interesting one. One would proceed accordingly to take any job that pays well, regardless of how boring and soul crushing it is. However, when one would consciously bring the importance of money over everything to the forefront of their mind, they might begin thinking and feeling quite differently towards themselves. They might feel that they are wasting their lives and become upset and depressed, whereas choosing not to think about it or not to go too deep wouldn’t feel bad. And there lies an important misconception — there are no good or bad priorities, there needn’t be a moral judgement here. There are only conscious and unconscious priorities, with latter still influencing our lives but in an underhanded way. Knowing and accepting yourself is more helpful in moving towards your goals. NB! What is important now is not necessarily for life, priorities are until proven wrong or unhelpful, and are subject to change.

How does one choose when there is an abundance of targets? Try and ask yourself what is really important to you, and jot down a few sentences based on that. Then follow up on for a week or two to see whether the stated things align with reality. Things you do on day-to day basis, do they figure on your note? If yes, then great, you probably are on the right track, if not, then ask yourself “What is it, then?”. If you find that every time you re-assess, you feel that different things matter, then diversity is your priority, which is OK, as well.NB! Your internal priorities are just that, they are internal, so whatever others think of them is irrelevant, as long as you find that these particular priorities matter to you.

Now let’s say that we know what’s important and we are already knee deep in multitude of tasks on our way forward, which order do we tackle them in? How, in fact, do we choose where to start? It these video series we are presented with the “Eisenhower method” (also known as Eisenhower matrix, purportedly created by 34th president of the US Dwight D. Eisenhower, a man with high regard towards personal efficiency), in which one gathers all the tasks at hand and sorts them by their two features — urgency and importance

• urgency is an objective factor, as there is a deadline with which one has to comply, or else,
• importance is a subjective one, because what’s important to an individual varies wildly, thus when using Eisenhower’s matrix one should rely on their own priorities.

Marking each task on the above mentioned two features gives us four categories that are then presented like so:

Going back to the former president, it seems (or at least we are presented with this story here, it might as well have been apocryphal) that Eisenhower after sorting his tasks decided that he would spend 60% of his time on right upper corner tasks of his table, leaving 40% to be divided between the remaining three of them, as it seemed reasonable to assume that this particular way of partitioning his very limited time would lead to least amount of unforeseen emergencies, crises and other types of urgent, burning problems to solve on the fly. The exact proportion is not set in stone, but might be a starting point to be improved and adjusted, according to your own preferences, timelines and opportunities.

Here, I wanted to add that Wikipedia page on time management also advises us to delegate things from quadrant 3, and drop altogether as much as possible of 4th tasks but that again depends on the nature of your work, or studies.

If you feel like you are drowning, and wherever you look it’s only “Urgent, Important” stuff, and there seem no way that there will be time for planning, or reflection, you should put a hold on everything and dedicate a particular time period each day/week, specifically toward the tasks in the quadrant 2, as it is likely you’d never have free time as it is, naturally as it were, and instead you’ll be trapped in crisis-fighting mode perpetually, which is not only unproductive, but is actually bad for health.

Thus far we’ve discussed a few of the existing tools and techniques to alleviate and simplify decision making process, there so much more out there, in the Ether of human knowledge. So why then we still hesitate and struggle more often than not, why do we recoil from making decisions? There are two big categories, that could be regarded as separate only to some extent, seeing as a human mind and a human body are the one and all, but it is easier to narrate this way:

• physiological reasons — first and foremost it is the energy expenditure, as the brain functioning requires a lot and the brain itself is a bit of a miser, and any attempt at prompting it into more conscientious activity than barely necessary for survival might push into even more scarce economy mode, if there is not a sufficiently big and important reason to do otherwise; this type of resource allocation might be less than beneficial to our life goals and results we yearn to achieve, but as long as it does not impede survival, or our ability to reproduce we’re good from physiological standpoint
• psychological reasons — and here randomness comes in (again! or it does not ever leave, really) as however much one would prepare, one could not know the full extent of possible consequences of any decision, it’s just not in Nature, and this uncertainty scares us into attempting to stop the multiplying of consequences by avoiding making decisions, at the same time skirting any responsibilities that would stem from a decision made. Any decision will lead to more stress, and why would anyone want more stress in their lives?

Now then, if this capability costs us so much, leads to extra helpings of stress, then how about to hell with it? But as we have discussed earlier, even when one does as one’s mom/friend/wife tells them, one makes a decision to follow this other person’s advice. However you wriggle, you’ll have to make some decisions in your lifetime, and then they will be quite as stressful and likely not well thought through due to lack of practice. On the other hand, you can help yourself by learning how to make decisions as easy and efficiently as possible, with a side of decreased stress.

Which leads us to Stephen Kovey, or more precisely to the concept of the circle of influence and the circle of concern, presented (and multiplied thenceforth hugely) in his book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”. He defined the circle of concern as a everything in your life that, well, concerns you (in a bothering sort of way), whereas the circle of influence as all the things/events which you can influence. Average person’s circle of concerns is much larger than their circle of influence, leading therefore to the worry nay anxiety filled existence without much hope of changing, or influencing change for the better. In other words, we tend to fret over all sort of things that we could not alter. What he advised to do then is to concentrate most of one’s efforts on things that one can influence. Let’s say you are in school and your graduation exam looms over your head as yet unformed, but already way too real, unavoidable tsunami. Thousands upon thousands possible ways and outcomes wash over your ankles as heralds of inescapable change to come. So what do you do — do you continue to stand there horrified, rooted to the spot and loose yourself in still hypothetical seas of despair or do you run for your life, alert everyone on your way, and try and save yourself, or in this particular situation — get your wits together and put all your efforts into studies because whatever you do, most likely exam day will come, and only the time and effort spent on learning will carry you through this particular storm. You could not affect the test, examiners, weather, or international political situation, all you could have done is prepared yourself. Thus do yourself a favor, even whilst striving to increase your circle of influence, focus first on what it is now. Do the work that is in front of you, and then the next, and so forth. And so with time you’d be able either focus on what is really important, shutting out the white noise, or to increase your circle of influence so much that it will become the same size with your circle of concerns.

Up next: it’s still scary, it is certain that nothing is certain, being flexible, and who’s idea was THAT