Decision Making: the art that no school teaches you
Decision Making is like sex, everybody engages in it but most people don’t take the time to read about it or learn it methodically. This results in sloppy decision making.
We make decisions everyday, but every-time we have a critical decision - a job prospect, a life partner prospect, a decision to move countries or cities - we start from the ground up, we think about what we truly want, make pros and cons and discuss with our trusted and loved ones. This is an extremely sub-optimal way of decision making and one that I am guilty of doing several times in the past.
Unpacking good decision making is a complex process but over the years I have found 3 fundamental rules (borrowed from others) to be the most critical. They have had a significant impact on the quality outcome of my decision making and also materially driven down the cognitive load expended to arrive at those decisions.
Fundamental 1: Build a framework, don’t make decisions on the margin
Build a framework of your values. Make sure you note down things you don’t value. Keep adding to the framework as your objectives changes or you learn new things about yourself or the world.
But do not change the framework during or just before a big decision. Changing a decision making rubric on every decisions is what I describe is marginal decision making. It doesn’t yield great results in the long run and takes too much mind space to make decisions.
Most big decisions people make are around people (the biggest factor that determines the outcome of your life), exploration/adventure (equally, if not more important than career), career opportunities (jobs, study abroad, education institutes), money (investments, earning, spending etc).
One should write down a framework that encompasses all these four key decisions. Framework is a set of values which matter to you and in what order ideally. This exercise should be done during peace-times i.e. during times when there are no big decisions in the next 1-3 months. Write about what you value in people and what you don’t, write down whats important to you in career - autonomy (?), retirement by age 40 (?), ability to create something new (?) or one of the several other things. Similarly write about about adventures you want to explore etc.
When an important decision making time, please do not make a pros or cons list but test each available option (including not doing anything and ignoring the decision altogether) against the framework and see which decision clearly comes up on top.
When I made a framework, few things became very clear that I value
People: I absolutely enjoy the company of zestful people. Even in business or sports, I would rather win with people than win alone
Autonomy: I don’t function well without it
Creation: I like to build things that others can use
Adventure: Both at work and in life, I like choices which present a challenge, have high degree of change, and allow for spontaneity.
What I don’t value
Opinion of others about my potential: I drive no pleasure from status or intellect signaling. It helps easily turn down roles with fancy titles, prestigious organizations etc if they don’t fit my core values.
Money beyond a threshold amount: I need a threshold amount of money to be able to pay my rent, travel couple of times a year and be able to enjoy some dinner/drinks with my friends. If I can do this without digging a hole into my savings, money stops influencing my decisions. Thus, beyond a certain threshold amount, I don’t let money govern my decision making. I am maximizing for my values.
Having a framework has helped me navigate lot of critical decisions with high impact and efficiency.
Please note, I am not suggesting my value system is superior or has helped me make better decisions. What I am saying is having a consistent decision making framework is a lot more valuable than not having more.
My philosophy on value based decision making has evolved with the help of countless decisions with my dear friends Artem, Marcin and Geoff as we ran around the trails of silicon valley.
Fundamental 2: 99.9% of things you encounter have happened before, learn from the past constantly, don’t wait for the decision making moment.
I used to be one of the guys who used to say “I learn by doing”, code word for “I learn by making my own mistakes”. Life’s just too short to make all mistakes by yourself and the whole purpose of civilization is lost if we don’t build on what is already known/learnt.
Every decision you are about to make or you are likely to make, others have made before - be it hiring, marrying, dating, learning new skills, career switch etc. I am not just going to give you the most obvious advice of go read up on how others made this decisions and better still go and speak to 2-3 people who have. That s obvious.
But most of these decisions can be anticipated much in advance. Even at 17 you will know at some point you will have to chose a career, deal with a bad manager, or hire a team, fall in love with someone, chose a life partner, have to save and invest your money etc.
They key is in writing down all the key decisions you think you might have to make over the next 5 years and then start finding people who can help you learn about those decisions long before the decision presents themselves.
This enables you to train your inner neural net, your sub-conscious brain and therefore build a better intuition about these decisions.
This concept is my own interpretation of things I think Ray Dalio and Bridgewater do really well and what I learnt while spending the summer of 2017 at Bridgewater.
Fundamental 3: Good decision making is about creating great options
Decision making is not a yes or no game. Decision making is a game that even if you sub-optimally choose some of the times, you stay on course on your optimal path.
This is purely driven by having great options. Imagine what good looks like and then put a lot of upfront effort in creating options - creating great options.
This is something I learnt from a professor during my grad school and has served me well. Think in advance of the kind of decisions you might be presented with and keep your eyes and ear open about options, and continue seeding them.
