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Most things can be undone
Life is full of tricky decisions. If you make them small enough, you can pivot as you go.
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I made a few decisions, quite early in my life, that have had permanent, life-changing impacts. Having kids was one - once you’ve got ‘em, you’ve always got ‘em! I’ve been a mum since I was 16, so that’s a lot of my life shaped by that choice.
The average person makes 17,000 decisions a day. Most of those are easy ones like what to have for breakfast or what time to leave for work, but some of them are harder.
Tricky decisions include uncertainty, trade-offs or big impacts
Tricky decisions will often include one or more of the following:
Unfamiliarity. You haven’t made these kind of choices before, so you’re not confident. This might include things like buying your first house, or hiring for a new position.
Best bad choices. Situations where every alternative has a downside, and no option is superior.
High stakes. These are scary decisions that have a high perceived risk, like a significant financial or personal commitment that could go wrong.
Identity impacts. Milestone choices that change how you think about yourself, like personal development or a job change.
As a rule, you'll know it's a tricky decision when generic Google searches are totally unhelpful and no-one can make the decision for you.
Tricky decisions don’t have right answers
Every tricky decision is unique and has its own considerations, and the more important it is, the less likely there is to be a 'right' answer.
There’s just consequences we need to live with, many of which we won’t see coming, no matter how much research and planning we do.
We need to be careful about making tricky decisions too big.
In my work, I’ve noticed how often we make this mistake. We try and plot the whole path from start to finish, and control all the variables.
Instead of trying a short course, we plan a whole career.
Instead of testing a new tool for a month, we design a digital transformation programme.
We’re scared of the uncertainty in our environment, so we try and control all the pieces. More often than not, that’s a mistake.
Any choice we make will lead to unintended or unexpected consequences. The job won’t be what you thought it would be, the house will have unexpected repairs, the person will have quirks and foibles that don’t emerge until later in the relationships.
When we’ve made big decisions, we can feel trapped by our own investment and commitment, and pour ever-increasing amounts of time and energy into the wrong thing, because we don’t want to lose face, and we’re blinded by the sunk cost.
Make minimum viable decisions instead
If we make small decisions, and run temporary experiments, it’s easier to change things along the way. As we get new information about the consequences - positive, and negative - we can tweak our approach, or abandon ship entirely.
Most decisions can be unraveled (kids being a notable exception!), and people aren’t paying as much attention as you think they are. There’s no shame in being a dynamic, changing person who tries new things. There’s no shame in some of those things not working out.
Try thinking of yourself like a startup
Startups are exciting, experimental ventures. They’re lean businesses, run by passionate founders, trying to work out how to solve problems in new ways. Importantly, because of the culture established around startups, they can pivot at any time, as they test their hypothesis, responding to customers, the market, and the lesson s they learn.
Your life is a bit like that too.
You’re always learning more about yourself and the world, and both of those things are always changing. Your beliefs shift. Your goals shift. Your environment shifts. You can test those things regularly, like your own little business hypothesis, and review the feedback on what’s working for you, and what isn’t.
The small choices you make add up - some with results, others with lessons - but they all build towards the person you become and the life you have.
Importantly, just like a startup, you can pivot at any time, as you learn new stuff.
So, take a deep breath. Your tricky decisions are definitely tricky, I’m not arguing with you about that. But most of them can be unraveled if they’re not right the first time - especially if you make them nice and small to start with.
Good luck.
Here’s more help for you
For more on how to make tricky decisions more easily, check out these articles on my website:
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