Bad Decision

One of my current goals is to rekindle my love for reading fiction. 

I do read a lot but over the last few years it's become mostly non fiction. There are always a handful of non-fiction books on the go and I enjoy dipping in and out of them.

I like that you don't have to start at the beginning and finish at the end. You can just dive in wherever it looks most inviting.

Often, some of the reading is for work, so because a client has asked me to write a Communication course, I've got fifteen books on Communication open right now. 

True

Then there's non fiction stuff I'm personally interested in like learning about Memory and really getting to grips with the different systems you can employ to improve it. There's loads of fascinating strategies and techniques that can transform your memory, like the peg system or creating memory palaces. 

Anyone can do it (read Moonwalking With Einstein if you don't believe me) but the time and dedication required is beyond me right now.

Non fiction books are great because they're full of ideas and new ways of doing things or looking at things or thinking about things, but there are drawbacks too.

One of the biggest, for me anyway, is that after reading just a few pages I start feeling like there's a new thing that I should be doing or learning. All of a sudden I've got another job to add to my to do list! That can be a bit wearing.

Stories For Boys

Fiction doesn't have that effect. It usually has the opposite effect.

Getting back into fiction is a goal because reading made up stuff allows me to switch off and explore other worlds. To enter the lives of different people I'd never get to meet otherwise, learning about their experiences and hearing their innermost thoughts.

It's enjoyable escapism and a sort of learning by adventure. Reading fiction doesn't create new work.

Or that's what I thought anyway. It turns out that reading fiction can throw up new perspectives and give me new ideas to reflect upon just as much as non fiction. (Of course it can. Not sure how I forgot to be honest. My degree was in English Lit!)

Last week I was reading The Midnight Library, a delightful, inspiring novel by Matt Haig. This is the line that made me sit up and reach for my notepad.

"You can make a good choice that has a poor outcome."

It's deceptively simple but there's a lot packed into it. As soon as I read it, the words resonated. And I thought they might resonate with you too.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

I know many people I work with worry that the decisions they make might be the wrong ones.

Because they're leaders of organisations or in positions of responsibility their choices are often impactful and far reaching. And so they worry about the impact if they make the 'wrong choice'.

I'm generally no help with this as my default approach is to instantly agree with them. "Yep, you might make the wrong decision, you probably will."

This might not appear to be the most supportive tack I could take. It does surprise some people and I quite enjoy that sudden pause. But that's because it usually heralds a pattern change in a particular way of thinking.

How we feel about making big decisions is usually wrapped up in how those decisions will play out and how we then feel about the outcome.

What happens is that when the outcome is good we tell ourselves that we made a good choice. 

Conversely when the outcome is bad we tell ourselves that we made a bad choice.

Under Pressure

That's not always true but what it does is put a whole world of pressure on the decision making process. 

One obvious problem with that is you're more likely to make a poor decision under pressure, and then maybe make a bad choice. Self fulfilling prophecy alert!

So I like to reduce the pressure and generate a more relaxed approach to decision making. 

Be more sanguine and less emotional. Care about the decision, but not too much. And recognise that the decision and the outcome are two different things.

Look, the decision you make might be the right one. But it could well be the wrong one. We'll only find out as time passes.

The future will always let us know, quickly or over time, whether the decisions we make have good outcomes or not. But there's not a lot of value in fretting over this.

The key part to focus on is the information you have at the time, the information you are going to base your decision on.

You are going to try to make the best decision you can, using the best of intentions and the best amount of skill, experience and information that you have to hand. And that's enough. It has to be because it's all you've got.

Ideally you'd have all the right information, all the right skills and all the right experience. Wouldn't that be great? But that never happens.

You're always going to be making a decision under less than ideal circumstances. You'll never have enough experience to be 100% confident in your decision. You'll never have every single piece of information. 

But you still have to make the decision anyway.

Leader Of The Pack

It's often the case that you've been put into your position precisely to make these sort of decisions.

And the further up the food chain you go the bigger the decisions become.

Ideally you'll be brilliant at delegation so that you're not wearing yourself out making all the small decisions.

You can avoid decision fatigue and save your brain power for the big decisions. Even if you manage this there'll still be a large number of big decisions that you need to make.

You're deluding yourself if you think you're going to get them all correct. No way. Not a chance. 

You'll mess some of them up. 

Even though you make a good choice at the time. The truth is we only choose the decision, we don't get to choose the outcome.

Make sure you recognise that the decision and the outcome are two separate things.

Think Again

This is the full line from The Midnight Library:

"... You can choose choices but not outcomes. But I stand by what I said. It was a good choice. It just wasn't a desired outcome. You can make decisions and choices but not choose outcomes. You can make a good choice that has a poor outcome."

It can be very useful to recognise that. Liberating perhaps.

It's not that I'm being flippant or blase about making big decisions. It's just that worrying a) won't help and b) could make it worse.

So make an effort not to worry. Instead cut out the emotion and ramp up the rationality.

That's hard to do so sometimes we need a perspective shift. And maybe that's what that line from The Midnight Library can give us.

Fiction gives us new worlds and new ways of thinking.

And Yet

Sometimes you'll make a bad decision and it will have a bad outcome. That's on you. But you'll be able to learn from it.

On a bike / wine/ football ride with friends through France a few years ago we found ourselves in the midst of a village fete just outside Lyon. We were offered the local sausage delicacy, freshly barbecued andouillette.

We'd heard about andouillette and so forewarned, accepting felt like it could be a bad decision. It was. The outcome was deserved.

You can Google andouillette yourself but just to let you know near the top of the results is a page that reads "Where to eat andouillette: France's stinky, urine-smelling sausage".

Trust me, if offered, just say no.

That was clearly a bad decision. But I'd suggest that a lot of decisions we currently label as 'bad' weren't. They were actually 'good' decisions that had poor outcomes.

This weekend think back to some 'bad' decisions you made in the past. Were they really bad decisions?

Or were they good decisions that you made at the time (based on the available information) that unfortunately had poor outcomes. Would reframing the choice you made like that help in any way?