Decision-Making
and Problem-Solving
There's the story about the donkey. He sees two bales of hay,
separated widely from each other, one on his left, and one on
his right. He's hungry, and they both look delicious. He takes
a step toward the one on the left. But as he does so, he realizes
that he's leaving the other one behind. And it looks real good
now that he's moving away from it. So he changes his mind and
he moves toward the one on the right instead. But now the one
on the left starts looking good, and he doesn't like the idea
of leaving it behind either. So he changes his mind again. And
then again. Eventually he starves to death, unable to make a
decision.
This leads us to the Buridan's Ass Method (named after the story),
which amounts to this: do something! Make a choice -- pick one
of the bales of hay, and start munching. If it's the "wrong"
choice, you'll find out soon enough, and it won't be a disaster.
The important thing is to choose.
But the first step in decision-making is generating, creating,
and searching for alternatives -- alternative views of the situation
or problem, alternative solutions. Unless you deliberately spend
some time creating alternatives, you'll have an impoverished
view, a narrow range of options, and you're more likely to make
a bad decision.
The Checklist Method is a good, generic way to make many decisions.
After generating alternatives, take a piece of paper, and list
along the top the most important criteria that the decision
has to satisfy. For instance, if you're deciding where to go
on vacation, the criteria might be cost, entertainment, and
quality of accommodations. List your alternative choices down
the left side and see which alternative meets the most criteria.
A place where many people fall down in their decision-making
is in mistaking a problem that is part of a larger, recurring
pattern for a unique event. They treat the symptom and miss
the disease, and they end up treating a never ending stream
of symptoms without recognizing and addressing the underlying
problem. That's where therapy can sometimes be helpful. Sometimes,
a therapist's eyes can see the larger problem better than we
can. |
