How to Make Important Decisions the Right Way

Instinct, heart, head. Algorithms. How do we make our decisions? How can one find one's way in a dark forest, a real jungle, made every day, think about it, of about 35 small and involuntary, but sometimes very important, decisions? Once upon a time, life was simpler, fewer choices to make (at least in number), and a compass, sometimes decisive, came from experience. From the advice of the wise man of the moment. Which, for the more courageous, was combined with a desire to experiment, the ability to go beyond what was already known and established. At that point, the ancient phrase uttered by Caesar as he crossed the Rubicon applied: "The die is cast."

Index of topics

How many decisions do we make every day?

Reading a book by the historian Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the XNUMXst Century, we discover what we already somehow perceive. Algorithms are advancing, our hearts are retreatingAlgorithms, artificial intelligence, and therefore technology, will increasingly guide our decisions, thanks also to the fuel of Big Data that we have made available to them. Freely and even unknowingly. Little human emotion will remain in our decision-making processes, and so what if the algorithm, just like an autopilot, were to make some mistakes.

We do not know how inevitable the future indicated by Harari is, what we consider certain, however, is the decline of man, the waste of his feelings and in some ways also of his reason, in the face of the breakthrough of the technology In the sphere of decision-making. An intimate, private, personal sphere. Where the machine should enter only if and when we want it to. And not vice versa.

We need, therefore, to build some form of self-defense. Some barrier that allows us to regain control of the decision-making process and put ourselves back at the center of the field, as protagonists and not as actors remotely controlled from the outside. Thus, we rediscover the analytical value of a decision, and of a method. to get there in the best wayBy following a path made up of stages, which once identified we can complete almost automatically. And much more efficiently than artificial intelligence.

Don't just think about the result

The first mistake, sometimes fatal, is to focus on the result. The era of performance, of competitive performance, and of the result to be achieved, pushes us to construct, even mentally, an equation between the decision we must make and the goal we have set ourselves. This isn't the case. Some decisions have immediate effects, others that pave a path, the outcome of which cannot be defined in advance.

Take the case of a parent: how many decisions they have to make regarding their child's education. The mistake is to orient them toward creating, almost in a laboratory, a man who is the best in the world, with the finest qualities and without any flaws. Impossible resultIt's much better to limit the scope of one's decisions to a parent's duty to be present. At the right time and in the right way. And with the essential goal of giving a child the compass of freedom combined with responsibility. Then the path, and the results, will be his work, the child's, and not the parent's.

A similar argument applies to work. No one can dispute the desire to have professional security, achieve results at work, and bring home financial independence first, and the successes of a good career later. But so far, we're talking about results. What should instead become prevalent when making decisions about work and in theorientation even in this field your own choicesIt's the path, the process that leads us to do, or desire to do, certain things. And at work, the greatest satisfactions can come if we manage to cultivate passion, interest, and curiosity. Without wasting the talent we possess.

Asking for advice and cultivating doubt

The algorithm doesn't ask for advice; we must do the opposite when necessary. Woe betide those who fall in love with their own certainties, and long live doubts, as we've said before. And the doubt It must be resolved by addressing it with the support of the external opinion of others, more or less expert, more or less people we trust. Once upon a time, decisions of this kind were defined as the result of a "consultation." So, when faced with uncertainty, we have a duty to "consult," also because from an external voice we may hear a perspective, with respect to the decision to be made, which was up to now completely unknown to us.

Pauses for reflection

Doubt also leads to a balanced relationship with time. There are decisions that must be made quickly, sometimes a matter of moments. And decisions that instead need to be lightened even in the most classic of situations. pauses for reflection. In any case, heated moments, or those in which we are most mentally tired, are the worst for choosing and deciding. Here too, we reverse our position with respect to technology: the algorithm does everything in real time, it cannot take the time necessary to mature a balanced decisionToo bad for him.

Compass method

And it is within a temporal dimension that is not tied to the day to day that we can evaluate a decision, and its consequences, with what experts call the "compass method". In practice: once the point is clarified, it must be brought into sharp focus, before the final decision, by giving a quick answer to five questions. What matters. Who matters. What drives us. What holds us back. Where do I come from. The combination of the answers to these five questions brings us closer to the right decision. Or at least it should.

What the algorithm will certainly never be able to provide within its decision-making mechanism is the irrational component. The most important one. When we decide something with our heart, with instinct, with a strength that surpasses our cold calculations of rationalityThey are the most beautiful decisions, even if they are the riskiest, and the most exciting. The ones that make a difference in life and leave a lasting impression.

The heart lever

Let's stick with examples from private and public life. There's a moment in a parent's life, or even more moments, when they need to unleash maximum authority. Or maximum tenderness. They're opposite phases, opposite decisions, which share a power based on feelings, not calculations. With which of these two tools do we deal with a child who takes drugs? And if we wanted to try alternating them, how could it be natural? What should the criteria be? No algorithm will be able to provide you with decent proposals, while your heart will lead you on a path, hopefully the right one, with all the unknowns inherent in the wonderful, but extremely complicated, profession of parenthood.

A politician who makes decisions based solely on personal convenience or polls (two cases in which the use of algorithms is more than sufficient) may have a brilliant career, hold important positions, and have power, but he will leave no mark. And he will soon be forgotten. His entire career, when reread as a film of a public life, will be reduced to personal, ephemeral achievements, devoid of the power to influence others and change the course of events, the true and noblest of all. mission of politicsA politician with these characteristics, with these limitations that inform his decisions, can be recognized by his gaze and his demeanor. He fulfills his role by crawling up walls. Unlike the politician who takes risks, he also challenges unpopularity and continually makes decisions not dictated by an algorithm or a poll. He may lose, but he certainly won't disappear in the fleeting space of a few moments.

The difficulty of deciding

To decide, in the public as well as in the private, It's not always easy. In fact. Recent scientific research They have shown how our brain, constantly urged to make decisions, tends to protect itself by seeking two possible shortcuts. The first: doing rash choices, unscrupulous, and often counterproductive. Not taking the time to consider the right and most effective decision. The second shortcut: do nothing, and join the tribe of procrastinators, those who don't make decisions at all so as not to take on a responsibility. Another waste of time and gray matterFinally, if we stress the brain by forcing it to make excessive decisions, we also risk feeling exhausted, so fatigued that we're unable to find a middle ground for the problem we're facing. And in life, what matters most is not the starting point, but the end point of our thinking.

How to make decisions better than artificial intelligence