How to Make Hard Decisions
Make hard decisions by looking at all the possible decision scenarios.
My book Get-it-Done Guy’s 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More is coming out in mid-September! I’m scrunching my brow with a look of extreme determination, and hunkering down to do all the prep work that will make it a best seller. Sadly, no one knows what will make it a best seller.
Get-It-Done Guy: The Musical?
In anticipation of the book’s success, I’m doing what every good business author does: writing a one-man musical based on the book. But it’s not easy. I’ve never written a musical. Or a normal play. Or a short story. And no one’s ever really written a musical about labeling file folders.
This adventure is fraught with decisions. Who is my character? What’s his motivation? Why does he need to label file folders in the first place? And who is the mysterious disembodied voice he keeps hearing? If he’s a modern businessperson, maybe his high-tech labels are blank because of sunspots. Oh! Maybe his file folders are blank because the disembodied voice is an evil spirit bent on destroying him. But then he couldn’t possibly be modern day. Maybe he’s an 8th century Persian Prince in disguise.
This is too hard. Maybe I’ll just sit here, and be grumpy. Then I’ll punish myself for not being able to make more progress by ordering a whole plate of liver—I like meetings more than I like liver—and make myself eat the whole thing. Waah!
Why Some Decisions Are Hard
This decision is hard because it’s actually several decisions, all of which are pretty open-ended, but they’re all tangled up. And even though they all start open-ended, making one decision affects the choices for other decisions, which are already decided. Now, I have to undecide those and start again.
Have you ever scheduled a ten-person meeting? Everyone says, “Oh, my schedule’s free.
“Anytime next week. Just tell me when.” R-i-i-g-h-t. Monday at 1 pm. “No, that’s pretzel day,” says our intern, “but 3 p.m. would work.” Melvin objects, “That’s the annual office alphabetizing competition. Let’s meet Tuesday.” Our facilities manager can’t meet Tuesday. That’s when the telephone sanitizing subgroup meets. Thursday? Our client is busy. Friday? Bernice and Melvin are taking a vacation day so they can do the 3-day lovebirds weekend at the local casino. Free chips and salsa. (Now that their romance is official, they’re making a couple’s website, Bernice And Melvin
. Isn’t that sweet.)
Complex decisions have many moving parts. There are so many unknowns that making one part of the decision causes other parts to get confusing. These decisions paralyze me.
How to Make Hard Decisions
One way to unparalyze me is to give me a shot of epinephrine. I don’t like that method. A better way is to make all the decisions and find out what happens. I call this Scenario Decision Making. It takes a bit of time, but it can unravel the chaos.
Grab a piece of paper. Down the page, list the possible choices you could make for one of the decisions. Leave a lot of space between the choices. For Get-it-Done Guy: The Musical, I would choose to make the decision “Who is Stever?” and then list the possibilities: Stever is a modern-day business person. Stever is a Persian Prince. Stever is a mad scientist bent on world domination. Stever is a world-famous vet, specializing in nursing bumble-bees back to health.
Use Scenario Decision Making to Make Hard Decisions
Now for each alternative, think through the rest of the decision possibilities. Often each separate scenario has a very different set of outcomes. For example, when Stever’s a modern-day business person, the voice is his computer’s helpful talking paperclip—as my friend Kerry pointed out—and his files are blank because his computer came to life and erased them. It’s all quite obvious. When he’s a Persian Prince, however, the voice is a magical amulet he found, and his files are blank because an opposing Warlord has sabotaged him with invisible ink. As you can see, each scenario is super obvious.
Once you’ve identified the set of alternatives that come with each scenario, you can compare entire scenarios and not get lost trying to deal with the one-by-one decisions and their ripple effects.
Use Scenario Decision Making when Traveling
When you’re planning a flexible trip or vacation, Scenario Decision Making is a great tool. I went to New York to record the audiobook version of Get-it-Done Guy’s 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More. The recording would take two full days. Then I could add a day or two to the trip and meet with colleagues and friends. But how many days I stayed depended on which friends I could meet, and which friends I could meet depended on which days I was staying.
I considered three scenarios: going to New York for just the recording, staying one extra day, and staying two extra days. I called everyone I wanted to meet with and asked when they were available. With that information, I was able to create a complete schedule for one extra day and for two extra days. Comparing all three finished scenarios, I decided to stay two extra days. Rather than being paralyzed by trying to juggle a dozen schedules, plus possible bus departures and arrivals, I just considered three complete scenarios and chose the scenario I liked best.
Scenario Decision Making helps you make complicated decisions easier by untangling the connections between decisions and instead getting you to consider whole scenarios. The Organize chapter of my book has other great tips on simplifying decisions.
Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.Â
