Making hard decisions easier

Quite often we need to make hard decision. Many of these decisions have to do with priorities. We do not want to give up on any of our inspirations, yet if we pursue all of them we will die of fatigue. Occasionally there is no good solution, and occasionally an unexpected solution will work. For more information you may want to read
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As a competent, optimistic, intelligent person, in general, the more difficult the decision, the less important it is. In other words, you are probably fortunate that you have the opportunity to make this decision. Eat more to lose weight

When we have enough information and discipline we can take educated choices and choose winning strategies. If the information is lacking, or our discipline fails us, we are guided by our strengths and our weaknesses.

Overeating is one of my weaknesses. I would love to say that I conquered it, but unfortunately, that would not be true. I have lost and gained tens of pounds since I was 25 years old, and each time I ended up weighing more than before the diet. The only times my weight went consistently down were the times when I actually ate more food, but most of the food was raw. Raw food is not really fun to eat, it is not comforting or smooth and delicate. Raw salads, fruits, and tofu have a very low nutritional value, you can eat a lot of them and still lose weight. At that point of time, I had enough time to buy and cut all the fruits and vegetables I wanted, I ate a lot and I lost weight. Unfortunately, with small children, I did not have enough discipline to continue eating salads. I did not have enough sleep and worked too hard, I was edgy and I needed comfort food.

Why am I telling this story? It is easy to leverage strengths, as long as we have enough time to think and enough discipline to choose right. If we try to get out of the comfort zone too often or get too many tasks to handle, we will make wrong decisions more often and that will cost us.

P.S. Eating raw vegetables are OK, raw fish and meat are dangerous.

Should bad things be more difficult?

Clear code is hard to write and easy to read. Bad code is easier to create, but it becomes a huge headache soon after. When we have pressing schedules we create very bad code. Then we are pressed to continue working with it rather than rewriting from scratch, which creates more bad code. By visualizing ourselves reading the code, debugging it and showing it to our peers we reduce the urge to get over with the code.

When I was a contractor a few years ago, I had a strong urge to write code nobody understands to hide my trade secrets. It cost me several clients, before I stopped generating code only I could read. Anna used to sign people on NDA before teaching them our methodology. Only when her business suffered huge losses, we opened the relevant materials for online students. Transparency is scary. Being vulnerable is hard, but necessary. If you want to obscure your work to hide some secrets, probably something is deeply wrong in the work you do. Being proud of your work fills you with esthetic joy and passion, and people who learn from your work may be your best marketing tool.

Quite often temptations look like a credit deal: take the product now, pay for it later. Every time I use the credit card I visualize the money in my hand and then I visualize the interest above it. The visualization is very vivid. Usually, I still want to pay this time but get very careful the next time I need to make a deal.

Visualizing the FULL price upfront is a good way to make sure you can live with the decision. Each time I eat chocolate I imagine gaining weight equal to 10% of the chocolate I eat. I rarely eat sweets.

Impossible choice

Sometimes the choice is pretty much impossible. When faced with two equally good outcomes, it is easy to gamble. Two bad outcomes can paralyze us. Let us see what experts have to offer:

1. Visualize the possible outcome. Sometimes we can visualize our life after taking each alternative. If we feel better with one version of our future than another, this is a good bet. This method works very well in movies, in real life, it is often very complex. Quite often we simply do not have enough information for a good visualization, or there are so many choices and outcomes that visualization only confuses us.
2. Keep the options open. The choice that opens up more options for better future is usually a better choice. Many mistakes we do now can be easily corrected in the future if we do not constrain ourselves with hard obligations. Anything limiting our freedom should be very alluring otherwise. In theory, this is a good idea. However, if we are offered a better job that will make us work harder and make an obligation to work for at least two years, is it worth taking the new job? By this principle alone, definitely not. Most of us would still take the job, probably because of some more powerful principles.
3. Objectively evaluate the situation. We can try to consider all pros and cons and give a numeric evaluation for each choice. For example, if we know the value of our time and the premium we charge for lesser freedom, we can give a monetary value for each job opportunity and select the job that pays better. Will we be happy with a better paying job? Not necessarily.
4. Alignment with values. Let us run a short mental experiment. Suppose we are physicists that love people and hate weapons. Suppose we get a job offer in a medical company and an offer from a big weapon manufacturer. Even a significant monetary difference should not make us choose the job that will make us trait to our values. What if there is a war, and by will save more lives building a weapon? We are flexible and may change our values if it serves our purposes. We can justify this change in the hindsight.
5. Intuition. After all other methods have been exhausted we are left with pure intuition. We need to make a choice and live with it. Will we regret it? Probably this is an issue of our character, rather than of the particular decisions we make. I tend to regret most of my choices, my father is very happy will all the choices he made. I am probably more successful by any objective criteria, and my father takes some credit for it. When we trust intuition we will win some and lose some, and either way, we will learn.

At the end, we probably should be grateful for the freedom to make the decision:

As a competent, optimistic, intelligent person, in general, the more difficult the decision, the less important it is. In other words, you are probably fortunate that you have the opportunity to make this decision.

Build on strengthes

Beeing free to set up our destinies, it often makes sense to choose one of these three strategies:

1. Build on strengths. Leverage the strengths you have to achieve your goals. Invest more into your strengths to get a competitive advantage. This way we maximize benefits.
2. Deal with weaknesses. Sometimes our progress is blocked by a major weakness. No matter how strong we are, some weaknesses can make further progress impossible. Social difficulties, depression, perfectionism may hinder any career progress. Dealing with weaknesses we minimize risks.
3. Fake it till you make it. Having a great role model, it is often possible to copy the winning strategy. This is possibly the most successful tradeoff of risk vs benefits.

Now, most coaching and marketing books will offer you to capitalize on your strengths and build something truly unique. This is a very good suggestion if you want to maximize the creative potential. The coaching business is similar to venture capital and very different from regular sales. Every immensely successful coaching client is worth at leat 10 clients who failed. For the client’s family risk aversion is typical. After all, dealing with possible fallout is 10 times more difficult for the family than the joy of possible success is shared. What is your choice?

Today, this is probably the fourth reincarnation of our superlearning business. Ten years ago Anna’s business was not growing so we hired a coach. She was highly energetic and highly qualified, she worked with Anna very hard. After 2 months Anna’s business became bankrupt. A good team can balance each other’s weaknesses. We revived the business later on after I took upon myself some business development roles.

Know yourself

This advice always works. It is very good to know yourself in several roles:

1. Unique features. What are our signature strengths and weaknesses? Quite often we and our closest friends will not know, but many acquaintances will immediately diagnose what makes us unique for them. This is our brand.
2. Underused and overused strengths. The way we use our strengths is very different from the portfolio of our abilities. This is something our best friends will see.
3. Situational strengths and weaknesses. You and only you probably noticed that some situations maximize your abilities, while other situations minimize them. Do you function better when there is a competition? Do you shine in critical situations? Are you better in highly complex scenarios? Do you need a very organized environment to flourish? People act differently in different situations.
4. Winning combinations Sometimes we can find a winning combination of factors: the proper team, the perfect challenge, the best job. When the combination is right we will probably win. We can often identify losing combinations as well. When we run into a losing combination, we need to change something significant or we will certainly lose.
5. Own it. If you cannot be proud of who you are, identify the areas you need to change. Pride in the results of your life and work is very important for success and wellbeing. Occasionally everybody makes compromises. It is important not to act, but to be truly proud of the choices you make.
6. Pace and perspective. It is very important to choose the right pace and perspective. Sometimes speeding up will make things more fun and more manageable. A positive approach usually pays off, but too positive approach makes you vulnerable.

Play volume

Every decision can be good or bad with anecdotal consequences. Big volume of decisions shows statistical traits and allows to learn. If you can make several huge decisions or a lot of smaller decisions, playing volume most of us can learn more.

Set up realistic goals, write down your criteria and gauge your judgment to improve intuition. Reading about judgment calls of other people often helps to improve intuition as well. After all, when all logical tools are exhausted intuition is the only thing we are left with.