A situation came up today that I ended up going over my approach to decision making/critical thinking. Since I wrote it up once, I figure I should turn it into a blog post. The context for this was whether to pursue purchasing a home or not.
People are event driven. Events illicit responses. Most people don’t notice the event (or under play it) and typically focus in on the solution/response first. i.e. I need to buy a house”.
Whenever I do anything, the first thing I figure out is what is causing me to want to do that?
So what is the event? What is the event that is triggering my response to seek out the purchase of a house?
- My current living situation is cramped and far away form where I work, so I need to get a bigger place (response)
- Or I think the housing marking in this area is going to “pop” (event), so I need to get into something now (response)?
- Or I’m sick of “losing” money on rent (event), so I need to buy a place (response)
- Or I’d like a place that I can call my own, and work on it
- Or something else.
Note: these are all good potential reasons for buying a house. I purposely laid all these out because they are all good reasons, but there really is only one event that is currently causing this motivation to buy a house. For example, you may have been sick of losing money by renting before, but what caused you to want to act on it now? It might have nothing to do with “loosing money on renting”. The trigger might be something different all together.
The primary activity is to find the event, otherwise you’ll get overwhelmed in reasons. This is why a list of pro’s and con’s isn’t very effective for evaluations. It really doesn’t help get anywhere, since the longer you stare at that list, the more items you’ll add to the list, and the more you’ll just end up going for what your gut reaction was in the first place.
Once you have the event, you can start a good evaluation.
The precursor to this evaluation is; Does this event really need a response? Basically you need to challenge the assumptions. Sticking with the “losing money” event, we need to look ask, Are you really “losing” money by renting?
Sometimes events are self-created based on assumptions that might not be true. (Are you really “losing” money by renting?)
[Changing gears a little, I used my recent choice to change jobs as an example]
This is what I went through when thinking about accepting the job.
For example:
- Better pay is nice, but was it the event that made me tell my friend that I was interested. No. I was certainly satisfied with my current pay. I’d certainly take more money, but pay was not the factor for looking elsewhere. If it was just about money, there were other options I could look at while staying at UM (or in the state).
- Career advancement is nice, but was it the event that made me tell my friend I was interested. No. I knew I wouldn’t get that here, but I was already working on my MBA. Etc, etc.
- Opportunity to make a bigger impact on the world. I do feel that my ability to achieve that is certainly stifled here, but arguable there are better ways for me to achieve that (like starting my own company).
So, if I was on a path that I was satisfied with, why in the world would I seek this opportunity out?
When I was first told about the job, the part that I latched on to was that it was out in DC. Now there are all sorts of reasons for me to want to work out in DC. However, at the root of it, I wanted out of Michigan because I wanted to start over (a change).
It was only when I got to that core event that I could start to evaluate whether I should take the opportunity. [As you might see, all those other reasons, everything outside of the core, are just manifestations of the burden of past success.]
Only once I had isolated it down to that, was I able to make progress towards a decision (evaluation).
Whenever I evaluate anything (i.e. just about everything I do, large and small) I ask myself 3 questions contrasted against the event/problem I’m trying to solve.
- What’s it worth (not only financial value, potential capability/ability)
- What the cost (again, not only financial, but opportunity cost, but rule out sunk costs)
- Am I willing to pay (reconcile the difference between the two)
After doing all that I am able to determine yay or nay.
…Hopefully that made sense. Part of the reason I’m blogging things like this is so that I can become a more effective communicator. Cheers to that.
