5 tips to help you make decisions in difficult situations

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

We are wrong. We misalign time and money, harm the environment, and eat unhealthy foods. All this is due to the fact that we often think automatically and do not weigh decisions carefully enough. These 5 tips will help you make the right choices in all situations.

1. Don't be afraid of change

People don't like to lose. The bitterness of loss for us is twice as strong as the joy of gain.

A simple experiment proves this. A group of students was presented with circles with the emblem of their university. Another group was asked to review and buy them. Sellers and buyers had to choose a price that was acceptable to themselves. As a result, sellers asked for a price that was twice what the buyers were willing to pay. The experiment was repeated dozens of times with a thousand mugs, but the results were always nearly the same. Our property seems very valuable to us.

Loss aversion works like a thinking trick. Because of this, we miss out on possible benefits and refuse even those changes that are in our interests.

Before giving up on something new, try to soberly assess what you already have. Consult the experts. You may be exaggerating the value of your own things.

2. Take your time to admire

Imagine: you receive a letter from a stock broker informing you that the price of certain stocks will rise sharply soon. After a week, these stocks are really going up. Next week, you receive another email informing the broker that other stocks are about to fall. And these stocks are actually plummeting in value.

For ten weeks in a row, you receive predictions that invariably come true. Now you are confident that the broker is a top-notch professional and will help you make a profit. However, take your time. There is something you don't know about.

Don't be in a hurry to admire the results of someone's work if you don't know what the chances of success were.

In the first week, you were not the only person who received the broker's letter: he sent out 10,240 letters. Half of the letters contained a forecast for growth, and the other half - exactly the opposite. Those 5,120 people who received the wrong forecast from the broker no longer received any letters from the broker. However, you and 5,119 other people who received an email with the correct forecast received another tip next week.

Of those 5,120 newsletters, half said the same thing as your letter, and the other half said the exact opposite. After this week, there were still 2,560 people who received two correct predictions in a row. Etc. After the tenth week, there are ten lucky ones who have received accurate recommendations from the broker for all 10 weeks.

Be careful. Perhaps what you are seeing is a coincidence or a planned scam. Try to see the whole picture.

3. Change the wording

Imagine: you are suffering from a serious heart condition, and a doctor recommends a complex operation. Naturally, you are interested in the chances of a successful outcome. The doctor says: "Of the 100 patients who underwent a similar operation, 90 are alive after five years." The statement seems encouraging. Most likely, you decide to have surgery.

Now suppose the doctor formulated the answer differently: "Out of 100 patients who underwent a similar operation, 10 died within five years." For most, such a statement sounds alarming. They will most likely refuse. The brain says: "A lot of people are dead, and this can happen to me too."

People have different perceptions of the statements "90 out of 100 are alive" and "10 out of 100 are dead", although their meaning is identical.

This phenomenon is called framing (from the English word frame - "frame"). We make a decision based on how the conditions of the problem are formulated.

Before making an important decision, try to reformulate the terms. Look at the situation in terms of benefits and losses. Try to get rid of framing and assess the situation with an open mind.

4. Control your optimism

Unreasonable optimism explains many risky actions, including those that endanger life and health:

• 90% of drivers are convinced that their skills are above average.
• Almost everyone thinks their sense of humor is above average.
• Students believe that in the future they will not face dismissal, heart attack, cancer, divorce or alcohol dependence.
• Approximately 94% of the professors of a large university consider themselves more talented than other teachers.
• Smokers know about the dangers of nicotine, but believe that the likelihood of lung cancer and heart disease will bypass them.

Believing ourselves to be invulnerable, we often fail to take reasonable steps to prevent harm. When considering an important decision, look at the statistics, get acquainted with negative scenarios, and figure out how to minimize their likelihood. Don't overestimate your capabilities.

5. Be open to new things

Almost anyone over the age of six can tie their shoelaces, play tic-tac-toe tolerably, and know all the letters in the word cat. But only a few know how to tie a bow tie properly, shine in chess and say the name of psychologist Mihai Chikszentmihalyi without hesitation.

Of course, we have learned to cope with more complex problems. We buy an already knotted bow tie, read a book about chess, search the Internet for the spelling of "Chikszentmihalyi" (and then copy and paste each time that name needs to be used), use spell checkers and spreadsheets.

But in life, everything is more serious: there are often no ready-made technologies similar to the “Spelling” function. Rather, help is needed to determine the type of mortgage than when choosing a loaf of bread.

We must always study new materials, look for interesting facts and understand how we can bring them to life.

Life is full of surprises, and we often have to make quick and difficult decisions. Make sure you don't have to regret your choice. The tips above will help you with this.

Check list

• Assess your assets soberly. Don't hold on to the familiar.
• Don't be in a hurry to admire. Dig deeper to understand what lies behind a superior result.
• Consider the problem from different angles. Get rid of framing.
• Take steps to minimize the risk. Don't consider yourself invulnerable.
• Learn new things. Life does not stand still.

Based on the books "How not to be mistaken" and Nudge.