Decision-making as a skill

What should I study? Where do I want to work? How will I become what I want to become?

Choices, choices and again, choices. An adult makes a shockingly total of 35.000 concious and unconcious choices a day. Although the field of decision-making is not recognized as a standalone-field by the general public, it is important to consider the dynamics within decision-making and how one could avoid so-called decision-fatigue. This post will reflect my own way of concious decision-making, how I changed my dynamics over time, how to set yourself up for strong ambition-based decision-making and why the past should not determine your future.

For a summary, please skip to the bullet points at the end.

As a kid I always wanted to become an aeronautic engineer and this ambition has stayed with me till I was 16 years old, when I signed up for the university I wanted to go to. Then, someday after the admission I got a phone call that I was not admitted to the university. I broke down so hard as I thought that all the hard work I put in life was meant for becoming that aeronautic engineer that I dreamt of. Some days later I looked for alternatives, broadening my perspective on the job market. I realized that by dreaming of aeronautic engineering, I lost sight of the numerous other possibilities that I could pursue. This is why it is important to map your ambition, thus also including analysis of your possibilities through every step that you are supposed to make according to your plan. Funnily enough, the university called me back shortly after and they said I was actually admitted, but I already embraced the numerous possibilities and chose a different Bachelor by then, therefore politely declining the offer. I  said no to the option that has filled my mind for those past 16 years. I literally said no to the dream and vision of what my life would become. And all of that came from some days of scouting what else there would be in the world, and what would encourage me to become more proficient in what I wanted. This shows the influence decision-making can have already. I already 'made the decision' that I would become an aeronautic engineer at such a young age, that I disallowed myself to even regard any other possibilities for years. Luckily, I managed to open my eyes and pursue a different career that provided me with even more possibilities and personal development. Today we are going to discuss the importance of decision-making and different factors that play a role in it.

First, let's talk about my current way of decision-making and how I got to this point. Decisions are made based on many factors, a few being context, motivation, competence and impact. Currently, my way of decision-making is strongly focused on using a prism that incorporates my end goals heavily. This enables a way of always looking at choices that contribute to your development. However, it is important to remain open, because we, humans, are complex adaptive systems. We benefit (yet also suffer) from the ability to develop ourselves when it comes to decision-making. If you use your end goals as your prism of decision-making, then that also means that your biggest downfall is the choices you miss due to your end goals changing throughout your life. Decision-making and ambition are strongly correlated, meaning that they affect each other. This for me is not the biggest challenge though, as I already have a solid end goal that is value-specified, rather than made explicit and unflexible. My biggest struggle with decision-making is finding the balance between including certain people and contributing to your end goals. This can happen when there is a discrepancy between one's ambition as opposed to another that is regarded as important within the defined system.

Recently, I 'updated' my way of making choices. A few months ago, I was introduced to Elon Musk's way of decision-making for his companies, which is actually quite simple. For all his companies he has a goal that he uses to evaluate any choice he is about to make. For his space-company (SpaceEx), he apparently evaluates every decision by whether the decision will speed up the possibility of colonizing Mars and making the planet livable. At first, this way of decision-making struck me as unlogical, due to the extreme explicitness and the lack of regarding contextual or indirect benefits to your defined system. However, it does seem to work as both SpaceEx and Tesla are thriving, meaning that there is actual evidence that whatever Musk is doing, also works. So why does this actually work? I, myself, like to believe that it is due to less complexity for decision making, while not suffering from drastic consequences as your main focus is reaching your end goals. It is important to note that I assume that one is able to foresee the wide consequences when making a decision AND that one thoroughly knows the end goals that should be worked towards. If either of the two is untrue, then unforeseen foreseeable consequences are bound to happen. What I learned from Musk is that less complexity leads to faster decision-processing speed, therefore also less decision-fatigue (read: getting tired of making decisions). In addition, using your ambition as your prism of decision-making will lead to a smaller amount of unwanted side-effects.

To continue on the trend of 'your ambition', I would like to introduce you to my value-specified way of defining my ambition and analyzing it. Over the course of my life I really started to realize the impact of tunnel vision on humans. I have seen many of my students being motivated by only what the tunnel shows them, yet at the same time I have also seen many students lose all motivation. This was mainly due to two reasons, which were either being denied along the path of their tunnel, or simply due to not realizing that their path contained many other factors that were not accounted for by them. This brought me to one short-term conclusion and a long-term improvement. Out of experience, I realized that tunnel vision is not something you can shake out of an individual. To say to someone that their dreams are not possible does not help, in fact, it only demotivates as you are acting like a denier of their tunnel. It is better to support an alternative approach in which you encourage them to look into the path more, state the advantages, disadvantages and every step towards that dream exhaustively. Indirectly, you will open their worlds as they are forced to look into the options provided per step. In addition, you will reinforce whatever path they are looking for. Now, this exercise boosts their motivation, yet also gives you insights into the values they attach to their tunnel, which is important for the long-term improvement.

For long term improvement, one should analyze the values displayed within the stated advantages and disadvantages. I had many students valuing monetary returns, therefore mostly stating money-related advantages and disadvantages. If you know that money or societal impact plays a big role in ones ambition, you are able to open the tunnel little by little to show what other options there are concerning monetary returns and societal impact. This way I try to open my students to more possibilities, which frequently leads to stronger placement, more self-motivation, an increased self-knowledge and a better defined ambition. Just to give a small example, a student of mine had been training for 12 years long for professional kickboxing, however, they found out she had an underlying heart condition that disallowed her to continue. It took almost a year for her to overcome her lack of motivation, yet after going through with the value-specification method, we found out that she loved the attention, the observable progress, and the consistent need to be better and to impress. I slowly started to introduce her to the corporate world, and nowadays she is a sales development representative for a company that wouldn't even hire her based on her skills on paper. However, due to her persistence and her self-knowledge she got herself into that company, barely even needing my help. She developed an improved decision-making mechanism on her own that made her get what she wants. As you probably notice, I strongly vouch for value-specified ambition. It just really keeps your mind open while contributing strongly to personal development, therefore also aiding strongly to decision-making mechanisms.

For the last part, I would like to describe one of the biggest pitfalls in decision-making and life in general. In all of the above, the assumption is made that people flow together with change, but this is not true for everyone. In fact, choosing not to grow is a big obstacle within decision-making, and together with letting others decide your choices it really impairs decision-making speed and satisfaction. This is realized rather late by people. Don't get me wrong, you can try to not-change, however, it is like swimming against the current. Sure, boasting about how you did not change over time is considered 'cool', but change is part of life and one should never forget that. Do not make decisions based on what you have been, but make decisions based on what you want to become. The past should not be seen as an obstacle, it should rather be seen as a reservoir or foundation of knowledge and experience. Use it to propel yourself forward and maybe even drive yourself through the change. Many of my students actually vow by a stoic lifestyle that assumes they will be fine if they do not change, thinking that the environment will always be the same and that their friends will remain the same as well. However, the world keeps changing and so does the environment. This also explains why it is not smart to let others make decisions for you. You are the one that should know yourself the best and thus you should be able to make the best choices for yourself as you are the only one that actually has access to the inside of your head. Others should only be used as a frame-of-reference. It should be emphasized if doing so, that it is important to include multiple frame-of-references as tunnel vision easily occurs when only asking one individual for their ideas. Also, making choices for the sake of others is something I have seen happening quite often (don't confuse this for making choices WITH others). Although it is hard to talk people out of this, the best thing to do make them realize that the decision-makers are the ones that will have to live with the consequences, and most of the time decisions for the sake of others do not contribute to the main ambition expressed by the decision-maker. This leads to two main problems, the first being the decision-maker becoming unhappy. On the long-term this then will also lead to problem number two, which is that same unhappiness making the people around the decision-maker unhappy. The latter also includes the ones for which the decisions were made. So in the end no-one is happy, an unnecessary decision was made, and valuable time was lost in suffering from the choice made.

To put everything into perspective: throughout life you become an adult for a reason, which is defined by many cognitive, biological and social factors; not just decision-making. Not everyone is the same either. Within the same time that you grow, the world also changes. People around you might not exist anymore, while new people are born into your environment too. Friends come and go as you switch schools multiple times. You yourself are confronted with harder problems, hormonal challenges and even more choices. Choices that you need to make. Your mission should be to first know yourself the best, knowing what you want in life and what would satisfy you. Do not be afraid of your past and its influence on your future, you decide what your future is and to do so, make your own choices based on your own values and your own power. You do not want others to make those decisions for you, only use them for frame-of-reference building. Become your own best friend and all of the above will happen automatically. If you know yourself well, you can market yourself to get anywhere you want, also meaning that you unlock the potential to make mostly decisions that bring you closer to your end goal.

As you have probably noticed through this post, I have described both pitfalls and also my learnings from improving my own decision-making. Below I have summed them up to provide the key findings from this post:

• Decisions are made based on different factors, varying from context and values to motivation and ambition.
• Strong decisions are made because of two reasons, one having thorough understanding of end goals, which are mapped out. This serves as a solid foundation to work from and towards.  
• The second reason for making strong decisions is actually thoroughly foreseeing and understanding the consequences, meaning strong prediction skills and insight into possibilities, regarding decisions.
• The challenge of decision-making lies with balancing ambition, consideration and any other factors included when making decisions.
• A paradoxial relationship can be found between ambition and decision-making. Both are affected by each other, yet are also the origin of each other.
• Humans are complex adaptive systems, meaning that we change through time. It is logical that we make different choices. Learn to embrace the adaptivity, confront oneself and let go of the past, so that the path to the future may be carved.
• Tunnel vision is dangerous due to not reaching the end of the tunnel, or mapping out the tunnel wrong.
• Value-specified ambition-mapping strongly helps in optimizing decision making.
• Making decisions by yourself does yourself, but also those around you a favor in the long-term.
• Use others for frame-of-reference building. Mapping ambition is a very important process and using multiple frame-of-references will contribute to a clearer image of what is possible!

In conclusion, decision-making and ambition go hand in hand, so it is important to realize that realization of your end goals focuses on making good decisions. Those can only be made if you clearly have your end goals defined, while also having a margin of flexibility. Overall, a value-specific ambition approach goes together well with decision-making. Embracing human adaptivity and worldly changes are imperative to evaluate and improve decision-making. In the end, you are the one accountable for your future and this realization also justifies making decisions based on your end goal, rather than making decisions for the sake of others.

It could be that this blog is experienced as rather unstructured. As you might have noticed it is after half a year that I have been writing a blog again. This is due to my focus on studying. There is another blog coming up in which I will explain what I have been doing in the meantime. I am looking forward to consistently write again as I have found more inspiration and time to write. For now, I hope that despite that unstructuredness, you can enjoy the contents of this blog.