This is how we do it
January 12, 2011 
What do you do when you have to make a decision that is nowhere close to being unambiguous?
When your gut says one thing and everybody and everything else says another.
Or when your gut says nothing, and all the MBA gyaan, the undergrad philosophy classes and the 4 am conversations with sozzled friends come swirling back to a muddled mind.
Is it just wishful thinking? Cognitive dissonance? Pure idiocy?
The easiest thing (weigh pros weigh cons! make a spreadsheet! analyze! MBA!) is also the worst thing to do.
The most difficult thing is to just be. Patient.
As GD would have said to us : Sit down. Shut up. Don’t move.
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Shortly after I wrote this, I had a phone conversation with someone about this post. He says to me, “Yeah, I agree with what you said. That’s why I didn’t do anything about XYZ.”
I was confounded. Being still as I mention above in no way implies doing nothing! Or going with the flow. In fact, it has everything to do with going against the grain and understanding why we think what we do, and why we act the way we do. It actually involves doing MORE work than a simple application of “logical” or “emotional” rules to a situation.
A friend of mine sent me a piece of work that explains it far better than I have and I’m copy pasting what he wrote.
“My first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always
> someone else’s; it’s always what I’ve already heard about the subject,
> always the conventional wisdom. It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the
> question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play
> that I arrive at an original idea. By giving my brain a chance to make
> associations, draw connections, take me by surprise. And often even that
> idea doesn’t turn out to be very good. I need time to make mistakes and
> recognize them, to make false starts and correct them, to outlast my
> impulses, to defeat my desire to declare the job done and move on to the
> next thing.” (Will D)
Thats because this is an optimal method but not always practiced. Most decisions taken on the basis of emotion. I just read a fascinating study on how emotion, however short term factors in on ALL decisions taken AFTER. Now that confounds me.
You know, I think I ve read this too.. Dan?