Member-only story
The real reason you can’t make that big decision
Decisions boil down to two options: do the thing or don’t do the thing.
🗒️ We love a pros and cons list, but they are becoming less helpful because our lives are more complicated now.
Listing out advantages versus disadvantages is as helpful as the Mash game that predicted our futures — not very helpful.
Pros and cons lists don’t work because each of the listed items are not weighted equally. Even if you assign a weight to each item, the list still won’t reflect what you really want.
Best case, the list will tell you the ideal decision for the situation, but it will not reveal the best decision for you.
📘 Quick story: in 2019, my husband and I had to decide where we wanted the military to send us next. I love a spreadsheet so I listed out the potential locations and created a formula with weighted variables (career growth, investment opportunity, proximity to family, desire to live there, etc).
The spreadsheet would calculate the best decision, we thought.
The final result was 🥁🥁🥁 San Antonio, Texas.
Our reaction:
