How to Make Better Decisions (And Stress Less About Them)

22:11Yes. Because you ruminate, which is extremely human. But like it just, you know, so then your choices get like more problematic.

22:16Amy Wilson:Where do you rank decision making as a problem in your life on a scale from zero? It is not a problem at all to 10. It is a paralyzing problem in your life. Not really a problem for me. I'm pretty direct and decisive, but sometimes it's a problem. I think that's what I learned researching this episode. Like, sure, sometimes like you have the flu and so does your kid and somebody wants to know, like, that's going to be a stressful decision or you have to decide by May 1st where you're going and we didn't get the financial package back from the school yet. That's a stressful decision. And so, yeah, I guess what I learned is like everybody's like that sometimes.

22:50And yeah, you shouldn't feel bad about yourself when decisions are stressful. But if they're always stressful, there's, you know, there's things you can do around it. How about you?

22:57Amy Wilson:I think it's something that has become so much less stressful, but I've also kind of made a lot of the big decisions of my life. Like, what am I pursuing? I don't think my life has as many variables because I was thinking, like, this isn't something I feel like I think about a lot. But I think that might be it, that my life just does not have a ton of variables right now in terms of, like, I know where I live. I know who I'm married to. I know who my kids are. I know how many I'm going to have. You know, I think that some of the decision making maybe gets a little easier as you get older. That was what I want to sort of focus on next.

23:28Like, so yeah, like decisions are hard sometimes. Why is this a problem? Because for reasons like regret aversion might actually lead to having more regret about whatever decision you made because you weren't looking at the choices carefully. You were just trying to avoid future sadness. Yes. Decision fatigue leads to worse decisions. There was a study among doctors that showed that as doctors got later in the shift, they would make decisions that were more often the default decision. They would choose a more conservative treatment option, maybe, like just do surgery, when maybe the surgery wasn't necessary if you do this, or just take both medications rather than fine-tuning it.

24:07Right. Which is why I think there's starting to be a lot more pushback in the realm of medicine about this idea that like you should be superhuman and have, you know, 14 hour shifts because you're not making as good decisions. 14 hour, 24. Yeah, crazy. Exactly. So when our decision making energy gets depleted, our choice making actually suffers. And so the likelihood that you'll have satisfaction later also suffers. And so it actually matters that you protect your decision making energy for the stuff that matters. Because like you said, sometimes you make decisions about things that really matter.

24:38I read an article about a kid graduating from college who had dreams of being a teacher, but went to a very expensive college, college debt. And this marketing firm was coming through and they're like, go work for the marketing firm, get the internship. So he got the internship. He's working for the marketing firm. You'll regret it later, right? Regret aversion. he becomes a marketing person and is like punching the clock and not liking it at all because he made what seemed like the right decision and the decision he so we wouldn't have regret later and you know a couple years later he became a teacher which is what he wanted to do in the first place now he had made more money doing this marketing thing and paid off a lot of his college debt so maybe it was exactly the right decision but he's like i made the decision like what do you mean you're not going to take the job at x firm that everybody would die to have an internship at.

25:25And he was like, oh, OK, I guess I should. So that's an example of like a big decision being not thought about the right way.

25:30Amy Wilson:I think foundationally for me, the idea of decisions is, as so many things we discuss on the podcast, it can really be about the illusion of control that like you can make the right decisions and have a good life or have good outcomes and you can make the wrong decisions and have wrong outcomes. And that that idea is, whether it's true or untrue, it's just fundamentally unknowable. Like when I was deciding whether or not to get married and have kids to my current husband, I decided to. I don't know what my life would look like if we had broken up instead. You know, we broke up at one point, got back together.

26:11Amy Wilson:Like those decisions have had the most profound effect on my life. But the other path is invisible to me, you know. And so I think that the idea that we tend to define backwards, that was the right decision. Because look at where I am now, you know. And I was just thinking about this in relationship to just the idea of the sliding doors and, you know, every day. Like you read about whatever. You see somebody on TikTok who's missing an arm, right? And then they get on and they're like, it was a Tuesday. And I decided to go to the forest by myself or whatever. And you're like, oh my God, at some point during these decisions, you're going to lose an arm.

26:54Amy Wilson:You know, it can paralyze you in that way of like every day I have to make the right decision so I don't end up without an arm in the forest. Right. And you can't live like that. You can't live with regret aversion. No. Oh, I got a piece of advice a long time ago that I've shared before, but my husband and I say it to each other all the time. And I'm not going to lie, the person who gave me this advice, kind of a madman, like don't know that I should be following this advice, but I do. When you are faced with a decision and you can't decide, you should always choose action over inaction. That was his advice.

27:24Yeah, give me an example because that sounds like sometimes a great idea and sometimes terrible.

27:29Amy Wilson:Should we go out to dinner tonight? If you really can't decide, go. I have another what do you call that that you live by dictum what is it called like a principle that I live by which is that you always you go to every wedding and funeral that you're ever invited to but that is decide once that is like yeah I do that like I'm going it isn't like oh should I go and I might miss it you have a rule for your life that removes that decision but this decision is rooted in action over inaction like I would rather spend six hours at a boring wedding than look back and be like, I can't believe I'm a subperson's wedding.

28:04Amy Wilson:I really should have been there, you know? That's something I genuinely follow and my husband says it to me all the time. He's like, oh, let's just do action over inaction. I want to move to like solutions, like some ways to make decisions easier. And there are lots of things like that that you can do for yourself. We have a bunch. But I wanted to start with saying that not all decisions can be simplified. When you're a parent, you sometimes have to make pretty difficult decisions because you're making them for other people. So it isn't like, don't overthink, like pull them out of school. Who cares?

28:29Make the decision. We're not saying every decision should be made lightly or quickly or that it's only your rumination that's making things hard at all. What I do want to say is like some decisions are really important and you need to save your decision making energy for those decisions because everybody's got a finite amount of decision making energy. And there's ways that you can make decisions that seem hard a little bit more concrete. Okay. All right. Here's one thing you can do. Make big decisions actually earlier in the day. This is from Psychology Today. your cognitive function declines slightly as the day goes on and your peak cognitive function is about 90 minutes to two hours after you wake up so if you have a big decision to make do it in the morning i mean i know i do better writing in the morning and or even researching this episode i was doing it last night and like my eyes were crossing and i woke up this morning had a cup of coffee and i was like oh one two three it was so easy yeah because i had the cognitive energy of earlier in the day.

29:26So like I have to decide what tile I'm going to pick. I'm going to get up tomorrow and I'm going to go to the tile store at 930 and I'm going to pick a tile by 1030.

29:34Amy Wilson:You know, the old expression, nothing good happens after midnight. The decisions I have made after midnight have been some of my weakest, shall we say, like the late night decision making, not always for the best. Choose action over inaction is go home at midnight. Like, should I have an action over inaction except for after midnight? At which point the only action you should take is get your butt off. Right. Exactly. Okay. Let's take a break. When we come back, we're going to go through all these other ways to make decisions a little easier. Great. Nutrafol supports hair health from within, working over time to deliver results you can see and feel.

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32:45Amy Wilson:That'd be fun. Are you kidding me? No, you will never regret that tattoo of your college boyfriend's name. You have to get it. It's so romantic. You should have another baby to keep the first baby company. O-M-G You should totally go hit on that guy I mean, I know he has no job and no plans And he's, like, already dated every girl in this bar But he has the cutest Irish accent Just because I've never had kids Doesn't mean you shouldn't listen to everything I have to say About how to raise yours Enjoy every moment, Mama You'll never have these precious times again With your three kids melting down in a grocery store While one of them vomits This has been advice we definitely should not have listened to from the What Fresh How podcast.

33:36Okay, the next thing you can fix about what makes decisions hard. So the first one was we fix the decision fatigue thing by if it's a big decision, do it early in the day. The next one is this paradox of choice that the more choices you have, if there's 47 kinds of peanut butter, I don't know what kind to buy. And you'd be like my father-in-law and you're going to bring home the chicken nuggets that have the cheese in it. I mean, talk about choices regretted. monstrous. Please never mention that again. That was terrible. So there's something that Science of People website calls the 5-3-1 decision funnel.

34:06This is like scientific, do it this way. You have to narrow things down and make a decision. Where should we go on vacation next summer? You could go anywhere, right? You could go to Great Wolf or you could go to Paris, whatever. You got a lot of decisions. Start by picking five things that are maybe suitable, Not the moon. You know, like possible in this world. Not the moon. And then you evaluate those five options more carefully. Then you narrow the list again to three. And then you use your gut or pros or cons to make a decision. That you have to choose between the five things become three things.

34:39And then you pick one of the three things. You don't pick one of the anythings. You don't pick one of the 500 kinds of tile that you narrow at first.

34:46Amy Wilson:I'm going to quote Say Yes from the dress right now. It's not say yes to the dress is what it's called. The other thing you have to do is only include a reasonable options. Don't put in your options. They always say this on say yes to the dress. If your budget is$5 ,000, don't try on a$12 ,000 dress because it will make all the other dresses look like crap. That's a good point. Don't put on your decision list like let's go for an all family, you know, train trip around Europe if that's out of your budget. Because now Great Wolf Lodge is going to seem terrible. Right. We could have been in imaginary Paris right now.

35:21Amy Wilson:It's like you could have never been in imaginary Paris. Don't try on a$15 ,000 dress if your dress budget is$5 ,000. Say yes to the dress is actually like the perfect decision making example. Go early, get the first appointment at Kleinfeld's. Yeah. Bring two friends, not 20, right? I want this kind of neck and I want this kind of bodice and they'll show me in my price range, eight dresses with kind of that look and maybe one or two surprises and then I'm going to decide. Yeah, It's exactly it. Right. And by the way, it might be crazy. I look at some of my friends in their 80s wedding dress and I'm like, wow, you chose that.

35:54Amy Wilson:Interesting choice. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Seemed like a great idea at the time. The next thing to make decisions easier is, as the lazy genius says, decide once. Like you were saying, like if it's a wedding or a funeral, I go. Unless I absolutely cannot, I go. I'm not going to ruminate about it. For me, I have the same baby gift. I give every new baby that's born and usually the next two or three, two, I get the monogrammed sweater. And I know and I don't have to have it on my to-do list. It's a bing, bing, bing, one five-minute phone call. We grew up, there was a commercial on TV that said Wednesday is Prince Ranzoni night.

36:27Amy Wilson:That was a brand of pasta. We had pasta and meat sauce every Wednesday night my entire childhood. It must have made your mom's life easier because she had a lot of decisions to make all day long. She was like, great, love it. Let's do it, Prince Ranzoni. And especially for kids, I mean, any kid likes certainty. Some kids really crave certainty. You probably had a good day all day Wednesday knowing it was Prince Razzoni when you got home. Didn't have to worry about what was just like, it's going to be awesome. And this is actually important. So experts suggest that if you are somebody who makes lots of decisions at work, you're an ER physician, whatever, that you should.

37:01Like, it's even more important for you to have Taco Tuesday, to have the same breakfast every morning, to always wear great pants and a blue shirt, whatever. If you have somebody that decisions are a huge part of your life, then simplify elsewhere. Find the routine. Just like we were saying about the kids at the holiday time. You can't have everything be routine, but you can certainly have your outfits be routine if it's super stressful at work. The next one is offload when possible. This reminded me, I've said this to my kids. Somebody told me this, that if you can't make a choice, flip a coin and you will find yourself in the air while the coin is in the air, slightly rooting for heads or tails.

37:36You'll do it. And then that's your answer. It doesn't really matter what the coin says. It matters what you secretly wished for.

37:41Amy Wilson:There's a scene in Friends where one of them thinks they're pregnant. I think it's Rachel thinks she's pregnant. She takes a pregnancy test and she's like, I don't even know what I want. And Phoebe's like, it's negative. And she's like, oh, OK, OK. And then she's like, I'm just kidding. It's positive. And she's like, oh, like she realizes that she really did want to have a baby, you know, because she told her it was negative. So I think that obviously that's an extreme example. and don't do that. But letting someone else decide, like realizing, I think, even if you flip the coin and you, I don't know that you'll always have that feeling in the air.

38:18Amy Wilson:But it's a good way to notice if you do. But I think it's also accepting the fact that it's a coin flip fundamentally. Knowing that it's a coin flip helps, you know. My nephew just got married and I didn't know this story until his wedding. His wife, she wasn't dating and a bunch of her friends got together and put a profile for her, but she didn't look at the profile. They chose the person she was going to go out with from the profile. And it was my nephew and now they're married. Wow. And I was like, yeah, life is interesting. You know, I just think the illusion that like the way it happens is that you through your really smart knowledge, go out and make correct decisions.

38:56Amy Wilson:But also there's a lot involved that doesn't involve any of your smart choices. The science of people suggested like a version of the coin flip. It kind of combines the coin flip and the friends. And I thought this was interesting. Ask a friend, they say, to choose for you and then pay attention to how you feel when they give their answer. If they say you should do door number one and you find yourself like all of a sudden sad. OK, that's useful. It doesn't mean you have to choose door number one. It means you don't really want door number one. Or if they say door number three and you're thrilled.

39:24Awesome. Then you know that that was the right decision.

39:27Amy Wilson:I think another thing that we haven't given voice to, but maybe it just seems obvious, is that all decisions have positive and negatives. You know, my son was recently, he's just getting to an age of starting to think about the bigger pictures of stuff. And he's like, I just love animals so much, but I really want to be rich. And I can't decide if I want to just pursue money or my love of animals. But I was like, yeah, it's not door number one, door number two. Like it doesn't actually work that way fundamentally. But also there are going to be pros and cons of both of those. If you could choose a door, both of them would be pros and cons.

40:04Amy Wilson:And on the other side would be lots of happiness and sadness, I bet. Right. It's not the lady or the tiger. Is that an oldie locks alert? Back in my day, we used to read it in school. But the idea was it was a choice and you had to choose between two doors. Behind one was a lady and behind the other was a tiger. Did you have to like kiss the lady? Was the lady your mom? No, no, no. The lady was like a hot, sexy lady for you. Interesting. Did she get a choice to be behind the door? We don't know as part of the story. But the idea was you were either going to get a wife or you were going to get eaten by a tiger.

40:37Amy Wilson:And that's not really how decisions work. No, this doesn't mean anything to you. The lady. I have heard of the lady in the time, but I know that was literally was there's a hot lady that you get to make out with or a tiger that will kill you. I didn't. And like, where where do I see myself in that in that binary? I don't think I do. But the lady and tiger don't exist. That's it. They're all hallways where you sometimes run into ladies and sometimes get bitten by tigers. Like there's no doors. The pros and cons thing is something I have actually used in my life. Like when I can't make a decision of do I want to take this opportunity on or not?

41:09Do I want to, I don't know, mostly for myself, personal stuff. And I would make pros and cons lists because I would find that when I really make the pros of like why I should go on this trip and why I can't go on this trip right now or I shouldn't go. And then you cross out the things that are hypothetical. The regret aversion. I never knew that that was what it was called, but you remove the like something might happen while I'm gone, you know, or right. Maybe I'll get an audition and I'll miss it, whatever. Remove anything that was hypothetical. And then once I did that, there would always be one column that was way longer than the other one.

41:38And that would be my answer. That's interesting.

41:41Amy Wilson:I think I need more in my life decision handbrake. You know, like I think I tend to just be like, we're doing it. OK, there's a great New Yorker cartoon and it's a rigatoni. and he's talking to a Fusilli and he's just says, okay, Fusilli, you crazy bastard, I'm in. Like that's the cartoon because Fusilli is just - Curly. He's curly, he's just a nut job. But I think I need a little more rigatoni in my life. You should use the Eisenhower matrix. Do you know what that is? Oh, yes, please. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. I thought about this as a productivity thing and it is President Eisenhower apparently made decisions this way.

42:18each decision that you have to make is on an urgent scale like a sliding scale kind of urgent or terribly urgent or an important not that important or very important so if you can picture there's four columns and the first one is it's urgent and important gotta call the doctor back it's urgent but not important which is probably like mom i can't find my shoes right it's not urgent but important, we need to do our wills and it's not urgent and not important, it's time to sign up for the ladies' luncheon again, right? And so you put things that you have to make decisions about into one of those four categories.

42:55And if it's not urgent and not important, delete it. Like, just ignore that email. That's what Eisenhower would have done. Okay. If it's urgent but not important, who can do it for you? Who can run, get the toothpaste? If it's urgent and important, you're going to do it today. And if it's not urgent, but it is important, your wills, you put it on your calendar this Sunday. We're going to sit down after the kids go to bed and talk about our wills. Yeah. That helps me. It does when I'm like, I have so much to do. Like, okay, but what do you need to do today? What are the decisions you need to make today by end of day?

43:25I have like three things on my list. By the end of the day today, I have to get back to this person. I have to respond to this and I have to send out this email. That's what I have to do. And the rest of it can wait. And I think that is just another form of choice reduction. I don't have to choose among the 200 things I could do. I have to do the three things that I have already pulled out of the pile.

43:44Amy Wilson:Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that. And I think, I do think after talking about it, I probably need to take more of a pause and be like, this is a decision you're making. You know, I just tend to fly by the seat of my pants too much. And sometimes it's like, oh, that was a bad decision. You know, I just say yes to everything. And then I'm like, hmm, maybe I shouldn't have had these 19 things all happening the week of Christmas, you know? But if you're the kind of person listening who's like, oh my God, what am I supposed to get my sister for Christmas? I don't know. If you're that kind of person, you can listen to that and be like, wow, I could just, you could shoot from the hip and things go well at least half the time, right?

44:23Amy Wilson:Well, and you've said that you got advice a long time ago, like just make a decision to make it the right decision. And I do think in general that that's the best advice that like what you got your sister for Christmas, I will give you$10 ,000 if she can remember it next year. I bet she can't. I do not know what anyone got me last Christmas. I will not give you$10 ,000. This is not a binding contract. Don't call me. But then I think some of the bigger life decisions as our kids are starting to think about like where they're going to college and stuff. Yes, it will make a huge decision in the outcome of your life.

44:57Amy Wilson:You know, I was just talking to my other niece who recently got married. I was talking to her husband who was like, yeah, well, I thought about this school and I really want to go there and I didn't get in. And they met in college. And I think, you know, well, if you had, you would have never met her and now you wouldn't be my nephew-in-law. Like, I love when you said erase the hypotheticals because I think that the unknowable pieces you'll never know. And like, is there a version of this kid who would have gone to school A and been a really happy, productive person married to a different person than my niece?

45:27Amy Wilson:Yes, there is that version. And those unknowable things, like once the road diverges and the diversion is painful, you don't want to make the decision or maybe you're forced off the road you think you're on just saying like, this is now the path that I've chosen. I thought that we very much. I mean, I've told my husband this. I was fairly, what's the word, ambivalent about getting married and having kids and kind of giving up my life. I was older and I was stressed about the decision about whether or not I wanted to get married. And the minute we got engaged, that just melted. I never felt it again.

46:06Amy Wilson:I always felt like really happily married and comfortable married. But I think there would have been a different life for me if I hadn't gotten married. I don't know if I would have enjoyed it as much. Obviously, I have kids. I would never undo it. But I think sometimes we act as if there's hypothetical good paths and bad paths. And I just don't really believe in it. I think there's always hallways, never doors. There's always hallways. Can I give one more piece of small advice from when a decision is hard? Please. It's the kind of corollary to the first one, like make those decisions early in the morning if they're hard.

46:39If you're finding yourself fried by like, I don't know what's for dinner, stop asking me. You need a break and you need a micro break. You might need a walk around the block or you might need five deep breaths, if that's all you can have. But micro breaks, they actually are teaching doctors in the ER to do this now, to not go through your entire shift without centering yourself, because you will make less good decisions as time goes by. So if you're finding your circuits really fried, they're fried. Just do a little reboot and it doesn't have to be major, but it will make things easier. Or just say, you know what?

47:11I'm going to think about that tomorrow. It's okay to do that too. Love it. Solved it. Solved it. Done. Solved it.

47:16Amy Wilson:If you want to make a great decision today, Make a decision to review this podcast wherever you're listening. We are creeping towards that 1 ,000, guys, and someone's going to get us over the mark. You'll see. It's going to be completely different once we do. Everything is going to change. I mean, talk about that door is going to open. There's going to be 20 dancing ladies behind the door. Right. The door with the lady. No tigers. There will be no more tigers. I think this is the perfect episode to send to a friend who enjoys podcasts but doesn't have kids or doesn't want to talk about kids or whatever.

47:44This is the perfect sort of, this applies to anyone. Send it to that person. How to make decisions. Yeah.

47:50Amy Wilson:And with that, thanks so much for listening. We will talk to you next time. Thanks, everybody.

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