Choices and Decision Making
endless options
Do we make choices or choices makes us who we are?
tricky question - each of us makes different choice with some similarities on common things, like putting on clothes, working at places, going on vacation. but what type of choice we make is still largely in our hand (unless we outsource it on doing monkey see, monkey do). Everyone has different idea about what is important and what makes them feel best. It’s very important to make your own choices though, often someone else makes choice for us and that makes it hard to execute or stay true to it. If we make our own life choice, it gives our life meaning. Given the type of environment we live in, often we get fomo (fear of missing out) of doing something, and we try to chase it without knowing why we are going after it, in most cases it ends up with disappointment or unsatisfied feeling.
making choice intersect with our decision making mental model - how do we make a choice heavily rely on few other factors -
type of environment we grow up in, or where we live. whats socially acceptable around us.
our own biases based on our experience.
our emotional state, feelings
our past and memories.
not stating obvious but also time, economic condition and current state of life. like you mostly wouldn't go for nomad life when you have family to support. (although I am sure some people may do it. )
The answer to question - Do choices makes us? is tricky as first to analyze what do you mean by makes us? It's one thing that what others look at it and think or make persona around who we are - like wealthy, happy, family person, lazy, smart or street smart etc. and other thing is how we feel about ourself. It's hard to control N number of minds around you to satisfy and make fit our intended image into their mind, and its always better to develop self awareness and live life on your own terms. You cannot do that all the time, but at lest having somewhat awareness helps you to stay true and have happiness in your day to day life. Choosing what we mean to do or deciding with conscious and aware mind on doing something, makes us feel alive - it's like having skin in the game. When someone else made a choice for us and we tagging along, we mostly not that much care about how it goes, or we remain unaffected with outcome or experience. I am not suggesting that you want to be alpha and decide always, there are so many instance, you do want to go with a crowd and outsource the decision making, but you need to differentiate between those times. The criteria can be what matters to you, and what things you would like to do for happiness of people around you, and what times you don't care. e.g. where do you park car in open parking lot, its probably better to go easy on yourself and not stress too much about, but if you are choosing where to go for study, or how to deploy your capital - you may want to have your own thoughts and reasoning before going all in. If you don't have one, you have to make some effort and spend time on it, instead of escaping and going with general consensus.
There are so many things which can help us how we do day to day work - doing exercise, art work, hiking, trading, cooking food, buying house - each of this gives us options to pursue meaning in life, keeps things exciting, and stimulate us, entertain us. This items are endless - from minor items like buying particular type of clothes or what do we choose to eat in lunch to all the way where we choose to work or whom we get marry. According to study we make about 35,000 decisions in a day. If we go beast mode decision maker with full self awareness, it will make us miserable and over worked individual. Everything out there trying to eat our time giving all this options, from number of bread options in Isle 23, yogurt options in cold food section and Netflix library which we can spend hour scanning before dozing off. Certain framework can be helpful to be effective -
I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing, because I have too many other decisions to make. - Barack Obama, on why he only wears grey or blue suits.
Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg holds the same view about clothing. It simplifies things. It's not that they are cheap, or poor clothing choice - they saving themselves from mental fatigue.
Few things to consider while making choices -
It compounds, good choices can take you long way, but you need to have good decision making framework
You need good sleep, when you are fresh and ready, you will be able to make good choices.
As we make decisions throughout the day, eventually mind start looking for shortcuts. That's why lot of study suggest do hard work first in morning, instead of picking easy tasks, otherwise you will end up pushing it next day.
Put things that don't matter too much to you on autopilot, so that you can save your energy and decision making for things that matter to you.
avoid more decisions making, doesn't matter simple or complex, it will drain you. Put your obvious payouts on auto pay to save you time, get in schedule to line up your day and spend mornings for more productive time.
comment/ suggest if you have any thoughts around it…
Photo by Egor Myznik on Unsplash