Decision-making

Today I feel like writing something about decision-making so here we go!

I thought I would share a couple things I have learned along the way, social psychology courses mostly, that everybody should realize about decision-making. A few years ago I took a brilliant class on decision-making and the whole class focused around "gut decisions." People describe these as a moment where you feel something deep inside that says you should do something about it right now. But there's actually more to that gut feeling than you think. In simple terms, it's telling you that you're picking up on something.

Let me give you an example: one of the stories I read during this course was of a fire chief who was interviewed minutes after he instructed all of his firefighters to vacate the roof of a burning building immediately. Seconds later the roof collapsed. Every one of the firefighters would have dropped several floors and likely died. Instead everybody was off the roof safely before it happened. When asked why he decided to get them off the roof he simply stated "I had a gut feeling something was wrong." They've done some research on this topic and found some pretty interesting stuff. Essentially, research has found that the reason that he got a gut feeling was because something wasn't exactly right. Being a fire chief, he had several years in the field so subconsciously he felt that the roof was a little weaker than it normally feels and maybe the flames were up higher than they normally would be on a safe roof thus compromising the roof. So in actuality, it was his expertise giving him the gut feeling.

The point I'm trying to make is that trusting your gut really isn't that crazy. You might not be able to explain it in anyway but "I have a gut feeling" but sometimes those gut feelings could be you sensing something as an "expert" on the subject, whatever that might be. I mean expert in the broad sense that you've had a lot of experience with something. So if you sense a little gut feeling that something isn't exactly right or something is better than it should be trust it. Small short-term decisions that won't harm anything, especially if you have experience with what you're dealing with, is pretty safe to trust. It can't hurt. If it's a big decisions that do have some consequences, you might want to do a little research into what your gut is telling you.

For example, lets say you're a seasoned vet in the stock market and you're scoping the market and you make a bet that a company that you've been following is going to take off, watch it, don't invest, just watch it for a little while anyways. If your prediction starts to come to fruition do some research into what "your gut" is telling you and find out what's different about that company that you maybe noticed somewhere in your psyche but haven't brought it to conscious thought. Or perhaps you're playing a sport that you've played several times (lets say hockey for simplicity) and you get a gut feeling that a play is going to develop in a certain manner so you should move to the other side of the ice even though typically you wouldn't do so. Give it a try a couple times and see what happens. They always say that Gretzky could read the play well ahead of others. That's most definitely true and I'm guessing he used his "gut" to pick up on the way plays were developing.

Try it out a little. If you're a timid person and rarely trust your instinct or gut and end up on the losing end of the stick often, try trusting yourself and what you're feeling.

Keeping the decision-making ball rolling I wanted to share one more fun piece of information that I learned in my schooling that really struck a cord with me when I read about it: flipping a coin. Flipping a coin is a easy and fair way to decide an initial advantage for two separate teams (like the NFL coin toss) but it's also a great way to force yourself to make a decision. Lets say you are deciding between two job offers. One is in the current city you live in and the other is halfway across the country and each job has pros and cons and you don't know which one to choose. Flip a coin. If you flip a coin and it lands on the job in your current city and you feel no hesitation about saying "yeah that sounds good, I'm ok with that decision" then you have nothing to worry about. Take the job. What if the coin lands on the other job. Now you start thinking "oh boy ok I guess I'm moving and taking the new job. I really don't know how I feel about this". If you really start to feel uneasy about the way that coin dropped and you feel like doing a redo or a best of three just to make sure, your gut is telling you something again. Take the job in your current city. You clearly are leaning stronger to that side. You don't have to take the option that the coin gives you but it might help you see where your heart is. It works with complex and simple decisions. Take another example: choosing between two restaurants because you don't know what you feel like for instance. Flip a coin and see if you feel any resistance with the choice the coin gives you. If so then choose the other place. It's something I'll probably remember for the rest of my life and has already helped me navigate simple and complex decisions.

Happy New Years, folks! Lets make it a good one and trust our instincts a little more.