Making difficult decisions became so much easier when I realized:
a) that the fact that the decision was difficult meant that either choice had a close likelihood of turning out well.
b) that the biggest mistakes I have made tended to lead to my biggest successes.
In hunting and shooting sports we have a term, overscoped, that means your rifle scope is either too much for your rifle or you're at greater magnification than you should be.
This is the result of, yes, marketing, but also the kind of naive belief that more magnification → better.
The idea of always just throwing more brain-racking at a problem strikes me as similarly naive. Yes, getting down to work and doing the analysis is important, and sometimes there isn't enough of that. When you don't have enough, go ahead and add more.
But sometimes, the naive brute-force method isn't what’s called for. Sometimes, instead, you need to zoom out.
A day or two ago, someone pointed to a great article on Melatonin[0]. I'm pretty sure it was a repeat, from a couple of years ago.
In any case, the thing that struck me, was the recommended dose, of 300 micrograms (0.3mg). Since the lowest OTC dosage is 3mg, and it goes up to at least 10mg, this was a shock. I have been taking 6-9 mg per night.
I immediately lowered the dosage to about 1mg (I have 300 microgram pills on order).
You’re lined up on a target at 30x. Fighting your breathing, heart beat, movement from the rest / bipod / barricade. It’s never going to be perfectly steady, and that 30x magnification is showing every bit of sway and deviation of the target and your reticle.
On 10x, a guy can come in, line it up, and not see all of that deviation. He sees the target, the aiming point (which is rarely your exact cross hairs, a different topic) and just focus on a good trigger pull. The target is a lot smaller to him, but that’s ok because it’s not a complicated shot, just a small target.
There is also getting lined up for your next shot, the recoil on 30x means your field of view has jumped and left the target somewhere out in the ether. If you have multiple shots to make, the guy on 10x will be able to see his next, or at least track where he is now and needs to be next.
Once, I was trying to decided between moving to North Carolina or Southern California for work (there is a song in that somewhere). Both sides had pros and cons, and I couldn't decide.... So I flipped a coin. It came up Carolina, so I flipped it agin and moved to California. It was amazing how having 'decided' I could then evaluate the other oppertunity.
(And I think the Carolina business suffered greatly during the 07 recession, but I bought a house in Cali before the market fell... so either way was a path with struggle.)
Whenever you’re called on to make up your mind,
and you’re hampered by not having any,
best way to solve the dilemma, you’ll find,
is simply by spinning a penny.
No—not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you’re passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you’re hoping.
>Once, I was trying to decided between moving to North Carolina or Southern California for work (there is a song in that somewhere). Both sides had pros and cons, and I couldn't decide.... So I flipped a coin. It came up Carolina, so I flipped it agin and moved to California
yeah, I think it was in some movie - if you can't decide, flip a coin, and you will already know which side you want it to land while it's still in the air
also, if you can't decide it often (but not always) means choices are about equally good (unless you're missed something big), so you probably won't be terribly wrong either way
I sometimes use a variation of this with others who are stuck: I just choose one for them. Half the time they accept it, and the other half of the time they go the other way. :)
If you're with a group of people who are trying to decide where to go to dinner, but no one's putting out suggestions or willing to make any hard calls:
Suggest you all go to McDonald's.
There's nothing that gets people to immediately shoot down an idea and suggest something else quite like the prospect of a Big Mac.
My "group decision on where to eat" rule is pretty simply but works well:
* Anyone can veto a suggestion, but they must suggest an alternate restaurant (that has not already been vetoed) instead.
This rule is gameable. A bad faith participant could veto a restaurant and suggest a patently horrible one and then rely on someone else to veto that and do the work to come up with a good suggestion. But there is a meta-rule here which is:
In most groups I find myself in, the likelier collective response would be closer to "oh my gosh, I haven't been there forever because I try to be healthy, but that sure does sound good."
Never underestimate the efficacy of light to moderate physical activity in synthesizing information without necessarily directly thinking about the topic at hand.
We enter a different thinking mode, termed "diffuse", where the release of focus allows us to subconsciously zoom out and stitch together the newly acquired information and partial revelations into a clearer more advanced picture.
Eli Goldratt used to sometimes say "If you're looking at a problem and see no solution, it means one thing: You're looking at the problem too narrowly."
Nice parable. To anyone that hears it and gets convinced that you can never tell what's good or bad in the world, please note that this only applies to single events within a large complicated system. Not large emergent systemic effects.
While all this and most other advises are applicable to career, money, and tangible things, what does one do when unable to make a decision in intangible things like relationships and love life?
Asking because stuck in a situation where not sure what choice is better for me, for the other person and there is nothing that's helping me decide.
I believe if I collect enough information the best decision will stand out. Yet rarely is this the case. I continue to rehash the same thoughts, think there's information I'm overlooking and so continue to search. But the yield from doing so continues to diminish. Then I read the following from the book On Being Certain:
Without a circuit breaker, indecision and inaction would rule the day. What is needed is a mental switch that stops infinite ruminations and calms our fears of missing an unknown superior alternative. Such a switch can't be a thought or we would be back at the same problem. The simplest solution would be a sensation that feels like a thought but isn't subject to thought's perpetual self-questioning. The constellation of mental states that constitutes the feeling of knowing is a marvelous adaptation that solves a very real metaphysical dilemma of how to reach a conclusion. [0]
This clicked to me. I try to think my way to a decision. But what I really need is a feeling.
"If you can't choose wisely, choose randomly" remains my favourite discussion of this issue:
As moderns, we take it for granted that the best decisions stem from a process of empirical analysis and informed choice, with a clear goal in mind. That kind of decision-making, at least in theory, undergirds the ways that we choose political leaders, play the stock market, and select candidates for schools and jobs. It also shapes the way in which we critique the rituals and superstitions of others. But, as the Kantu’ illustrate, there are plenty of situations when random chance really is your best option. And those situations might be far more prevalent in our modern lives than we generally admit.
Randomness, in the face of insufficient information or a poorly-scoped model for interpreting data, at least avoids the overt biases of bad decisionmaking systems.
> The defining characteristic of the great relief is the sense of immediate progress. After days or weeks of careful analysis, you are suddenly moving forward again and… it’s a delightful relief. You are no longer stuck endlessly second-guessing yourself.
I truly wish this were my experience. If I'm facing a decision that it really hard for me to make, then once I've made it, I experience no such relief.
there's a related effect that feeds into this, that is the subject of Robert Frost's poem "the road not taken": if we make a decision and things go well, we typically put the outcome down to our decision, regardless of whether it made a difference. So we get to thinking that our decisions really matter, even if they hardly do at all.
When I am in a stalemate between a couple of options I find it easiest to use a decision maker app [1]
If I feel bad about the decision I try again until I feel good about it. Letting go of the choice and leaving it to fate to decide kinda sets you free.
> Even if unexpected consequences begin to show up, you eagerly attack them because consequences are more fun than mental paralysis.
Isn't this what got you mental paralysis in the first place? And why young people are generally more risk-taking? As you get more experience, you learn that every endeavor hides unknown risks.
It's this uncertainty (and unknown) that makes you hesitant. If you did enough endeavors that made you go through significant pain, you'll likely don't want to go through the experience again.
I think this guy is spot on. I've learned, reluctantly, that if I leave the house feeling like I've forgotten something, I usually have. Maybe it didn't matter, but better to know that before leaving.
Of course he wouldn't advise dithering forever, but if your subconscious is making you anxious about the decision, it might be for a good reason.
I like randomness for these kinds of things. A special coin if the options are balanced, an enormous metal icosahedron (the D20 of Decision) if I feel like shading things out in five percentage point probabilities, or a Tarot deck if I am looking for reflection on my own thoughts.
An old poker trick: A watch works well for this. You can assign probabilities to actions based on where the second hand is. So for example, Suppose you think it should be 80% action A, 10% action B, 10% action C. If, when you glance at your watch, the second hand lies between:
0 and 6 seconds --> Action C
6 and 12 seconds --> Action B
12-60 seconds --> Action A
Another useful trick I use is to take the sequential digits of pi mod (n) for n possible actions. I happen to remember 40 digits or so of pi, so I can produce 40 very random-looking actions that way.
Personal anecdote: I refuse to blog anymore because I can't find the right CMS to use. I have weighed the pros and cons so heavily over a whole decade and just can't decide what to use (And I've used them all). Posthaven, Wordpress, Ghost, WriteFreely & Write.as, Blogger, Tumblr and a few others.
Now I am aware of the phrase: 'If you wait until you are ready, you will never get it done'. But I've actually blogged professionally for about 3 years and saw what that meant. You had journalists cold-calling you in the middle of the night because your blogpost was going viral, traffic going through the roof.
Though the blog didn't go down because of the traffic, I was still paying for the CDN monthly which at the time because of AD revenue didn't hurt my pocket as much. Today I simply can't afford it, and out of respect for my users, I won't serve ADS. So the workaround for many in that situation, is to go with a free service like wordpress.com or Tumblr or Blogger etc. But they're all weaponized with ADs and tracking cookies, and I don't want to make my users suffer loss of privacy because of what I've written.
I used to self host, but then even that comes with caveats: can you harden the VPS enough to stop bots and bad actors getting in and ruining your blog? How does the CMS bounce back after the VPS has been rebooted? All these stupid edge cases can make you go insane. Then the CMS itself has to be configured the right way. Have you got HSTS turned on? Have you got your caching right? Are all your images optimized?
It's too much. I prefer to just lurk on various Internet forums since I can still reach a large audience that way, albeit even forums come with caveats. So far certain communities haven't had their Eternal September yet, and places like Tildes.net look promising. In the end, it was a good run, but it can't last. Maybe I'll take up blogging again, when I'm 'not ready' for it and DGAF anymore, who knows?
[+] [-] wintermutestwin|4 years ago|reply
a) that the fact that the decision was difficult meant that either choice had a close likelihood of turning out well. b) that the biggest mistakes I have made tended to lead to my biggest successes.
[+] [-] davtbaum|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heavenlyblue|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fouronnes3|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] torstenvl|4 years ago|reply
This is the result of, yes, marketing, but also the kind of naive belief that more magnification → better.
The idea of always just throwing more brain-racking at a problem strikes me as similarly naive. Yes, getting down to work and doing the analysis is important, and sometimes there isn't enough of that. When you don't have enough, go ahead and add more.
But sometimes, the naive brute-force method isn't what’s called for. Sometimes, instead, you need to zoom out.
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|4 years ago|reply
In any case, the thing that struck me, was the recommended dose, of 300 micrograms (0.3mg). Since the lowest OTC dosage is 3mg, and it goes up to at least 10mg, this was a shock. I have been taking 6-9 mg per night.
I immediately lowered the dosage to about 1mg (I have 300 microgram pills on order).
Slept like a baby.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28416035
[+] [-] SV_BubbleTime|4 years ago|reply
To explain overscoped to a non shooter…
You’re lined up on a target at 30x. Fighting your breathing, heart beat, movement from the rest / bipod / barricade. It’s never going to be perfectly steady, and that 30x magnification is showing every bit of sway and deviation of the target and your reticle.
On 10x, a guy can come in, line it up, and not see all of that deviation. He sees the target, the aiming point (which is rarely your exact cross hairs, a different topic) and just focus on a good trigger pull. The target is a lot smaller to him, but that’s ok because it’s not a complicated shot, just a small target.
There is also getting lined up for your next shot, the recoil on 30x means your field of view has jumped and left the target somewhere out in the ether. If you have multiple shots to make, the guy on 10x will be able to see his next, or at least track where he is now and needs to be next.
[+] [-] 5faulker|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baldeagle|4 years ago|reply
(And I think the Carolina business suffered greatly during the 07 recession, but I bought a house in Cali before the market fell... so either way was a path with struggle.)
[+] [-] perchard|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zircom|4 years ago|reply
There is indeed a song there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvLjJE7Bt88.
[+] [-] kofejnik|4 years ago|reply
also, if you can't decide it often (but not always) means choices are about equally good (unless you're missed something big), so you probably won't be terribly wrong either way
[+] [-] johnmaguire|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elwell|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ketzo|4 years ago|reply
Suggest you all go to McDonald's.
There's nothing that gets people to immediately shoot down an idea and suggest something else quite like the prospect of a Big Mac.
[+] [-] munificent|4 years ago|reply
* Anyone can veto a suggestion, but they must suggest an alternate restaurant (that has not already been vetoed) instead.
This rule is gameable. A bad faith participant could veto a restaurant and suggest a patently horrible one and then rely on someone else to veto that and do the work to come up with a good suggestion. But there is a meta-rule here which is:
* Don't be friends with people who would do that.
[+] [-] laurent92|4 years ago|reply
So he had 8hrs sleep and a name.
That strategy didn’t work well for Jeff Bezos, who went with “Cadabra” for a few months, which he admits is a terrible name (cadavra).
[+] [-] tshaddox|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Teknoman117|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zababa|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stronglikedan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elwell|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelcampbell|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamespwilliams|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] datameta|4 years ago|reply
We enter a different thinking mode, termed "diffuse", where the release of focus allows us to subconsciously zoom out and stitch together the newly acquired information and partial revelations into a clearer more advanced picture.
[+] [-] jes|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edoceo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mlang23|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jes|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX0OARBqBp0
[+] [-] Swenrekcah|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sanketskasar|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidw|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ciwchris|4 years ago|reply
Without a circuit breaker, indecision and inaction would rule the day. What is needed is a mental switch that stops infinite ruminations and calms our fears of missing an unknown superior alternative. Such a switch can't be a thought or we would be back at the same problem. The simplest solution would be a sensation that feels like a thought but isn't subject to thought's perpetual self-questioning. The constellation of mental states that constitutes the feeling of knowing is a marvelous adaptation that solves a very real metaphysical dilemma of how to reach a conclusion. [0]
This clicked to me. I try to think my way to a decision. But what I really need is a feeling.
[0] https://www.rburton.com/_i_on_being_certain_i___believing_yo...
[+] [-] dredmorbius|4 years ago|reply
As moderns, we take it for granted that the best decisions stem from a process of empirical analysis and informed choice, with a clear goal in mind. That kind of decision-making, at least in theory, undergirds the ways that we choose political leaders, play the stock market, and select candidates for schools and jobs. It also shapes the way in which we critique the rituals and superstitions of others. But, as the Kantu’ illustrate, there are plenty of situations when random chance really is your best option. And those situations might be far more prevalent in our modern lives than we generally admit.
https://aeon.co/essays/if-you-can-t-choose-wisely-choose-ran...
Randomness, in the face of insufficient information or a poorly-scoped model for interpreting data, at least avoids the overt biases of bad decisionmaking systems.
[+] [-] JohnFen|4 years ago|reply
I truly wish this were my experience. If I'm facing a decision that it really hard for me to make, then once I've made it, I experience no such relief.
[+] [-] beaconstudios|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TrispusAttucks|4 years ago|reply
If I feel bad about the decision I try again until I feel good about it. Letting go of the choice and leaving it to fate to decide kinda sets you free.
[1] https://easydecisionmaker.com/
[+] [-] csomar|4 years ago|reply
Isn't this what got you mental paralysis in the first place? And why young people are generally more risk-taking? As you get more experience, you learn that every endeavor hides unknown risks.
It's this uncertainty (and unknown) that makes you hesitant. If you did enough endeavors that made you go through significant pain, you'll likely don't want to go through the experience again.
[+] [-] AlbertCory|4 years ago|reply
Of course he wouldn't advise dithering forever, but if your subconscious is making you anxious about the decision, it might be for a good reason.
[+] [-] at_a_remove|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Enginerrrd|4 years ago|reply
0 and 6 seconds --> Action C
6 and 12 seconds --> Action B
12-60 seconds --> Action A
Another useful trick I use is to take the sequential digits of pi mod (n) for n possible actions. I happen to remember 40 digits or so of pi, so I can produce 40 very random-looking actions that way.
[+] [-] legrande|4 years ago|reply
Now I am aware of the phrase: 'If you wait until you are ready, you will never get it done'. But I've actually blogged professionally for about 3 years and saw what that meant. You had journalists cold-calling you in the middle of the night because your blogpost was going viral, traffic going through the roof.
Though the blog didn't go down because of the traffic, I was still paying for the CDN monthly which at the time because of AD revenue didn't hurt my pocket as much. Today I simply can't afford it, and out of respect for my users, I won't serve ADS. So the workaround for many in that situation, is to go with a free service like wordpress.com or Tumblr or Blogger etc. But they're all weaponized with ADs and tracking cookies, and I don't want to make my users suffer loss of privacy because of what I've written.
I used to self host, but then even that comes with caveats: can you harden the VPS enough to stop bots and bad actors getting in and ruining your blog? How does the CMS bounce back after the VPS has been rebooted? All these stupid edge cases can make you go insane. Then the CMS itself has to be configured the right way. Have you got HSTS turned on? Have you got your caching right? Are all your images optimized?
It's too much. I prefer to just lurk on various Internet forums since I can still reach a large audience that way, albeit even forums come with caveats. So far certain communities haven't had their Eternal September yet, and places like Tildes.net look promising. In the end, it was a good run, but it can't last. Maybe I'll take up blogging again, when I'm 'not ready' for it and DGAF anymore, who knows?
[+] [-] slig|4 years ago|reply