1: “There is a vast academic and popular literature on the art of decision-making,” Oliver Burkeman writes in Meditations for Mortals.
“But much of it misses the point,” Oliver observes.
How do we get it wrong? “By treating decisions as things that just sort of come along,” he writes.
“It’s as though we’re sitting behind our enormous desk in the executive suite,” Oliver explains, “sipping our coffee, and every so often an underling hurries into the office, clutching a manila folder containing a decision we must make.
“It’s true that decisions do occasionally land on our desk, figuratively speaking,” he notes. “Should we accept the job offer? Say yes to the proposal of marriage? Hand over our wallet to the mugger, or decline?”
Yes, and. . .
“Far more frequently,” Oliver suggests, “the life-enhancing route is to think of decisions not as things that come along, but as things to go hunting for.
“In other words: to operate on the assumption that somewhere, in the confusing morass of our work or our life, lurks at least one decision we could make, right now, in order to get unstuck and get moving.”
So good!
2: Getting better at getting better is what RiseWithDrew is all about.
Monday through Thursday, we explore ideas from authors, thought leaders, and exemplary organizations.
On Fridays, we are exploring some of the life lessons captured by Oliver in his wonderful book Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts.
One of the themes of Oliver’s book is the idea of embracing our limitations. But doing so does not mean we settle for less in our lives.
No, “it’s not about passively sitting back and letting things happen to us,” he points out.
“The whole point of facing the truth about finitude is that it gets easier to spend more of our time on worthwhile and life-enriching activities once we’re no longer trying to do all of them, or do them perfectly, or do them with the secret agenda of achieving a feeling of security or control.
“That’s why our focus,” he writes, “is on the art of taking imperfect action.
“And I know of no better way to start doing that—especially when we’re mired in procrastination, or unable to figure out our next move—than to go looking for some kind of decision we could make. And then make it.
This approach differs from “trying to decide” or figuring out what to do, says executive coach Steve Chandler in his book, Time Warrior.
Instead, we “choose.” We make a decision.
We could spend weeks or even months figuring out the best way to start our screenplay. Or, we could just choose one of the three possibilities we’ve been considering.
“Or suppose we’ve been trying to decide, vaguely, about whether to leave our job. That’s the sort of dilemma over which people spin their wheels for years,” Oliver writes.
“But right now, over the course of the next three minutes,” he suggests, “it would be easy to choose the person in our social circle who’s most likely to have some good advice on the matter, then email them to invite them for coffee.”
“Most people believe a deficit in knowing is their problem,” coach Steve suggests. They “believe that they don’t know what to do, so it will take time before they do it.”
But choosing a course of action takes almost no time. We choose, and then it’s done.
Which is why not making a decision can feel so comfortable: “It’s a form of postponement,” Oliver notes, “a temporary avoidance of the painful sacrifices involved.”
Making a decision, whatever it may be, means we have taken ownership of the situation.
“It takes a little willpower, but the reward is usually an immediate boost of motivation, as we withdraw our psychological energies from denial or avoidance and focus them on action,” he observes. “Momentum starts to gather, and each decision proves easier to take than the last.”
3: Oliver believes that there are two rules of decision-hunting.
Rule #1: “A decision doesn’t get to count as a decision until we’ve done something about it,” he suggests. “Merely telling ourselves we’ve decided, inside our minds, isn’t enough. We have to actually begin drafting the opening scene of the screenplay, setting off down that creative path as opposed to any of the others. We have to actually email your friend about the coffee, thereby transforming our purely private doubt about our job into something that now exists in the external world.”
Rule #2: Tiny decisions are fine. “Grand gestures aren’t required,” Oliver notes. “There’s no need to leap directly from thinking about a career change to marching into your manager’s office to quit. Baby steps are fine; they just have to be real ones.”
E. L. Doctorow once observed about writing a novel: It’s “like driving a car at night. We never see further than our headlights, but we can make the whole trip that way.”
This approach applies to decision-making as well: “Keep making tiny-but-real decisions, and when it’s time to quit, our visit to the boss will be just one more incremental next step.”
More next week.
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Reflection: Am I waiting for decisions to come to me, or am I actively hunting for choices that could move me forward?
Action: Identify one small, real decision I can make today—then take action to turn it into reality.
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