Decision making is a primary component of wisdom and the very essence of being human. We all have to make thousands of decisions every day. Many decisions are automatic or happen so fast we aren’t even aware of the decision-making process. In this article we are going to explain a little about decision-making and our SimpleD model for decision-making, developed and refined over a number of years to be highly useful and easy to remember.
Making good decisions can lead to greater success and a better life. Making bad decisions can lead to problems, pain, failure and even disasters.
We cannot always know the consequences of our decisions. For example, a visitor to our community was trying to find her destination and made a quick turn into a side street. She did not see the biker beside her, but in an instant she killed the biker, with enormous painful consequences for both families and others.
Our minds use an ancient, fast, decision-making process designed to protect us from danger like an approaching tiger and instantly decide friend or foe, fight or flight. This allowed our species and others to survive and thrive for millions of years. But it is not always helpful in today’s complex, connected world. In fact it is often counter-productive
Decision Making First Principle: Think Before You Act
The first and most important principle in good decision making is, “Think before you act.” As noted above, our minds evolved to react to danger so we could survive. The first rule of animal survival is, “Don’t get killed.” In fact this react-to-survive response is hardwired into the brains of all animals with brains – or they would not be here in our world today.
This primitive part of the brain, called the Reptilian or Lizard Brain, is a complex mass of tissue at the top of our spinal column. It evolved eons before the rest of the brain. But it still calls the shots much of the time! Most of our decisions are made so fast we don’t even stop and think. The general principle of “Think before you act” is easy to say but hard to do.
So you will be doing yourself a big favor, as well as those who are close to you, if, whenever possible you learn to check yourself before you jump to a conclusion or take an action. Now if a child runs out in front of your car, you need to slam on the brakes before you can consciously think about it. But if you need to decide what to have for dinner, it would be better to think about it first, including to ask your spouse, partner or others who might be eating that meal. And of course if you need to make a larger decision like how to save for retirement, far more thought and research is needed. More on this below.
Decision Making – From Boy To Terminator
Making better decisions is something that has interested me my entire life. As a boy, my stepfather sometimes criticized me by asking, “Why didn’t you think?” I have always been prone, like a lot of people, to act quickly and often impulsively unless I knew I had lots of time to decide. Many of my mistakes in life were made by not thinking carefully before acting. Of course when you are young, you don’t even know how to think systematically, and some people never learn how.
In college I majored in philosophy and psychology, partly to learn better ways of thinking and to understand how the mind works. Although my career veered into journalism, public relations and marketing, I have continued to read hundreds of books and thousands of articles on decision-making, wisdom and how the mind works. The best of this has been useful in my personal life and business consulting.
The main problem with most decision-making models is that they were designed for business, and in many cases for group decision-making. That is certainly important, and the entire fortunes of companies often rise or fall based on the decisions made. Many books about decision making are also long and involved – too much to remember and use for everyday life.
But this site is designed for you, the individual, in hopes that it will make your life a little better. For that to happen, its core methodology has to be very simple, so simple you can memorize it, keep it in your head, and use it to think through any situation or challenge without pulling out paper or a smartphone to write on.
Albert Einstein once said, “Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.” When it comes to a useful decision-making model, we could not agree more. If the model is too complicated, you are much less likely to use it. But if it is too simple, you would soon find it is not very useful for making good decisions.
The 80-20 rule says that 80 percent of the value comes from 20 percent of the content. So we tried to eliminate the less valuable 80 percent and find and refine the 20 percent that is truly valuable and useful for you and other readers.
If you saw the early Terminator movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, there were a number of scenes “inside the head” of the Terminator as it calculated the situation with little screens in the field of view before making a decision. This was the director’s way of sharing what the Terminator was thinking without having him speak aloud about it. This has long been my visual inspiration for a better way to make quick decisions without jumping to conclusions – a little chart or table we can carry in our heads to help make better decisions. After years of working on this, I came up with the Simple Decision Making Model. Check it out.
The Simple Decision Making (SimpleD) Model
First we will present the Simple Decision-Making (SimpleD) Model, then explain each of its components, to help you understand and use it. We have intentionally transformed other more obvious words into S-i-m-p-l-e-D (pronounced “Simple D”) to provide an easy aid to memory. It isn’t perfect or all encompassing, but it is easy to remember and recall in your mind without having to pull out a smartphone or sheet of paper.
SimpleD Decision Making Model
Now let’s look at each component separately.
Situation – Decision Making Step 1
The situation is what you are facing as you try to make your decision. The time you spend analyzing your situation should be proportionate to the importance and urgency of the situation. You probably can handle a decision about what to have for dinner with a 30-second discussion with your partner, if any. But if you are trying to decide which house to buy, you should obviously do much more fact-finding.
An easy way to remember what to consider is the 5W2H question list from journalism and news reporting:
- Who – is involved?
- What – is going on?
- When – is this happening – time frame?
- Where – is this happening – location?
- Why – is this happening – apparent causes?
- How – is this happening – process?
- How much – is involved in terms of money and time?
If you are in a big hurry (really) just answer the question: “I need to make a decision about …” and put it into a few words for yourself.
Intentions – Decision Making Step 2
This is what you want to accomplish in this situation. For example, if you were an offensive football coach, you would need to make a decision about what play to run next. Your intentions would be to make a first down, score, and ultimately win the game.
If you need to make a decision about what to eat for dinner, your intentions might be to have a satisfying meal, to prepare and consume it in a short amount of time, and not to spend much money. Or in another situation your intentions might be to go to a fine restaurant, impress your date, and strengthen your relationship. It all depends on your situation.
Getting clarity on your intentions is very important. It will have great impact on your decision-making and the value of it.
If you are in a hurry, just ask yourself, “What am I trying to accomplish?” If you have a little more time, there are four main types of intentions:
- Purposes – Rarely do we have just one purpose when trying to make a decision. If you take a few minutes, you can ask yourself why, why, why – up to 5 times – to clarify your purposes. And then you might want to take the fourth or fifth “why” and make it your No. 1 purpose. For example, let’s say you are planning dinner with your significant other. Your obvious purpose might be, “So we can have something to eat.” Why? “So we can nourish our bodies and fill our stomachs.” Why? “So we can take care of our health.” Why? “So we can live longer and better.” Or maybe your train of thought goes to “So we can have a romantic evening” and then “So we can strengthen our relationship” etc.
- Visions – Sometimes when we are trying to make a decision, we have a picture or vision in our heads of the desired outcome. Again maybe it is a picture of a romantic evening or of being healthy and strong. Making your intention visual is very helpful, as long as you keep in mind that this is a “rough draft” subject to further decision-making steps.
- Values – What is most important to you? What personal values are relevant here? Maybe health values, financial values, emotional values, spiritual values, moral values, ethical values? We recommend that you take a few minutes right now to write down your most important values so it is in recent memory when you need to think about your decision-making intentions.
- Inclusion – If there is one thing that leads to bad consequences in decision-making, it is failing to include others in the process. Again if you have only 60 seconds to decide, the other person(s) might not be there with you for a quick conversation. Of course you can pick up your smartphone and probably get an answer to “Honey, what do you think about this?” in a heartbeat, but this needs to be a learned habit for many people, including me. If you have time, just ask yourself, Who will likely be impacted by this decision? Then see if there is any way you can get their input before you decide, before it’s too late, before a long string of painful consequences starts to unwind just because you were in a big hurry. When in doubt, ask before you jump.
Multiple Options – Decision Making Step 3
If you are in a hurry to make a good decision, your options are going to be limited. Your options for what to have for dinner could be to eat from the freezer or order take-out. (Or theoretically your dining options could include driving to another city or hiring a caterer, but those are going to take more time and probably more money than you want to invest.) If you are considering buying a new house and living in a medium-size or larger city, you might have dozens of housing options, depending on your income and local housing costs. You might not like or want them all, but there will be plenty of them out there. So again the number of options you create needs to be relevant and appropriate for the situation you are in.
If you’re doing this in your head or chatting with a partner, you might limit your options to three. If you have a little more time, you might need to jot them down on a sheet of paper or a smartphone app. If you have even more time, you might want to do an online search to see what options are out there.
Here’s a short personal story about how options can evolve as you explore. Not long ago one of our Siamese cats started licking herself in a few spots so intensely, she licked off all the hair and even part of her skin. The underlying tissue looked like raw hamburger and we were quite concerned. We had to research optional cures online and calling our vet because this was something we had never encountered before.
Unfortunately none of these initial “solutions” worked, but a friend suggested we try CBD oil. We bought some in liquid form – very expensive – but were not sure how much to give the cat, since this was a human “drug.” So we called the manufacturer, who offered very kindly to send us some samples of CBD ointment for free, something we had never heard of. The ointment worked like magic, rapidly healing all her wounds and breaking the habit entirely! This is a good example of how you don’t always know your options at first, and others will evolve if you keep looking and trying.
If you have time, let your brain generate some new options overnight before you decide. You’d be amazed how creative your brain can be if you just give it a question in the evening and let it process it overnight or later in the day. Sometimes the best options come to us while taking a shower, driving a car or other activity that does not put too much demand on our higher mental powers.
So now you have your list of options – short, long or evolving, depending on the situation. How do you weigh each option so you can move your decision-making forward?
Pros-Cons – Decision Making Step 4
One of the best ways to evaluate each option was first popularized by Benjamin Franklin in the 1700s and is still very useful today. Create two columns on a sheet of paper, spreadsheet or other app. Across the top (header row) put the name of the option in a few words, and in one column list the “pros” or positives, and in the next column list the “cons” or negatives. If you have multiple options now, this might be hard to do in your head. It would be difficult to keep all the points in active memory. But this is why good intentions often lead to bad decisions – not taking time to think through the options.
Actually this is how our brains work automatically as we make a decision. Millions of neurons rapidly process the known options and the one with the most “votes” gets selected. A quarterback has only a few seconds running the Run-Pass Option (RPO) to decide what to do with the football. He rapidly scans the field and moving bodies and makes an instant decision. This rapid option-weighing no doubt developed over millions of years as our brains considered the fight-or-flight option upon spotting a large animal moving toward our ancestors in the brush.
But we can get better results today by taking appropriate time to think about multiple pros and cons for each option. This can take up more than one sheet of paper, but paper is cheap and spreadsheet space is free. In the process of identifying a “pro” you might then be able to come up with a “con” that is the opposite. For example “fast service” might be contrasted with “higher cost.” Don’t just look at the pros-cons list once but think about each item and try to come up with more possibilities now or overnight.
Long View – Decision Making Step 5
When we take the long view, we think about possible consequences. Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO and one of the world’s richest men, has said that he likes to think about what the consequences of a decision might be 20 years from now. This is another huge pitfall that causes a lot of “good now” decisions to go “bad later.” Your Pros-Cons list can help you get started on this, but often that is in the present, and the future cannot be clearly predicted. One of billionaire Warren Buffet’s favorite sayings is, “It is better to be roughly correct than precisely wrong.” You are going to have to do some guesswork to take the long view and ultimately some risk. Practically all decisions involve some risk, and one characteristic of wise people is the capacity to take the long view and the risk.
Just take a few minutes to imagine each of your main options as a movie, and run the movie forward into the future. It’s surprisingly easy to do and can even be fun. Some things like fine wine get better with time, and some things like fresh fruit rot (unless they are turned into wine of course). Some things that are affordable now can get more and more costly each year – housing and taxes are good examples.
Once I had a summer romance with a college girl two years younger than me. She lived in Mississippi and I, a recent college graduate, lived in North Carolina. We met at a retreat center when I was working as a news reporter. We were quickly attracted to each other and I came back at the end of the summer to drive her back home to Mississippi. That was definitely a heart over head decision. On the long way home in an old car without air conditioning, I took the long view and realized this relationship could not be sustained for the two more years she needed to complete college. The long view is always a wise choice before making an important decision.
Evaluation – Decision Making Step 6
You’ve weighed your options and now is the time to look them over and evaluate which one is best. If you’ve done this on paper or a spreadsheet, it should be fairly obvious. By now you probably have a gut feeling or intuition about the best route to take. Even if you’ve done this in your head riding down the road or sitting in a chair or going for a walk, evaluation is so much easier when we’ve thought through our intentions, multiple options, pros and cons, and the long view.
One way to simplify the evaluation step is to distribute 100 percentage points, representing your time, money or energy, over the options. For example if you had four options and one was preferred, you might score them 75, 15, 10, 10. This is totally subjective for each situation and process.
Decision – Decision Making Step 7
The word “decision” comes from Latin roots meaning “to cut off.” Make the decision, cut off other options, and move on. This is more a matter of will, of not second-guessing yourself, than any complicated process. You can clarify this by defining next steps which you will take following your decision. This might include actions you’ll take, observations or measurements to make, and allowance for corrections or feedback to give you satisfaction and useful results.
We hope you find that it works for you, and as always, we welcome your feedback below on this page.
Top Photo "Decision Making" by Ben White on Unsplash.
Terminator photo from scifi.stackexchange.com.