Thanks for this post, Jess! I agree that these are important issues.
Personally, for uncertainty and decision anxiety, there are a couple of ideas that actually do help me stop that cycle when I think of them:
1. Hard decisions are (usually) the least important- “Do I want to eat or do I want to slam my head against that wall?” is an easy decision because there is a big difference between them. “What should I order off this menu?” is a harder decision because they have almost exact expected payoffs (eating delicious food. Anything on the menu should be good) and therefore it doesn’t really matter what you decide.
2. Do I need to optimize this decision? (Answer: probably not.)- Recognizing that trying to optimize most your decisions means you wouldn’t ever actually get anything done, and so deciding to be explicitly okay with just satisficing most your decisions. When I catch myself putting too much effort into a decision that I haven’t explicitly decided to optimize I’ll say out loud something like “This doesn’t actually really matter.” and that tend to help me make a “good enough” decision and move on.
3. I will be happier once I’ve made my decision and locked it in- studies have shown that if you have the ability to change your decision that you will be less satisfied with it than if you were locked in to it. Also making decisions is stressful so leaving them open is going to make you less happy. So picking a dress at a store that doesn’t do returns is better (by which I mean you will both like the dress more and be generally happier) than buying a dress with the idea that you can come back and exchange it for another dress if you decide to later is better than buying both dresses with the thought that you will return the one you like last later.
A decision can be hard because the possible outcomes are finely balanced in expected payoff, or because you are quite lacking in knowledge about the possibly outcomes and/or their likelihood. If it’s the latter then it can be hard and matter a lot! For effective altruists there can be a bit of both. “Should I buy this pen or this other one? A better pen might help me write more effectively!” is probably the former, but “What career should I choose?” is probably the latter.
Plus, the latter kind of decision holds the promise of high value of information. If only you devote a bit more time to thinking about it or researching, you might improve your estimates a lot (or not). So that’s another incentive to worry about and delay such a decision.
There are also decisions that are: hard, important, you don’t have enough information, AND the cost of getting more information is too high. Especially if you did this thought experiment: If I tried to optimize every decisions of a similar level of importance as this one, how much would I actually accomplish?
Even for career decisions, once you’ve narrowed it down to a handful that meet your criteria, there needs to come a time when you just pick one and run with it. Especially considering that a lot of the information that is very important is also very hard to get (It’s hard to know how good of a fit you can be for a job until you’ve actually done it for a while)
Great points Erica, thanks! I’ve been using very similar ways of thinking recently, actually, and it’s helped a lot.
One thing I’ve found, though, is that it’s easy to reflectively know that all of these points are true, but still not believe them on an emotional level, and so still find it difficult to make decisions. I think the main thing that’s helped me here is just time and persistence—I’m gradually coming to believe these things on a more gut level the more times I do just make a decision, even though I’m not certain, and it turns out ok. I think this is a classic situation where your system 2 can believe something, but your system 1 needs repeated experience of the thing actually happening—decisions you’re not certain of turning out ok, in this case—to really internalise it.
Thanks for this post, Jess! I agree that these are important issues.
Personally, for uncertainty and decision anxiety, there are a couple of ideas that actually do help me stop that cycle when I think of them:
1. Hard decisions are (usually) the least important- “Do I want to eat or do I want to slam my head against that wall?” is an easy decision because there is a big difference between them. “What should I order off this menu?” is a harder decision because they have almost exact expected payoffs (eating delicious food. Anything on the menu should be good) and therefore it doesn’t really matter what you decide.
2. Do I need to optimize this decision? (Answer: probably not.)- Recognizing that trying to optimize most your decisions means you wouldn’t ever actually get anything done, and so deciding to be explicitly okay with just satisficing most your decisions. When I catch myself putting too much effort into a decision that I haven’t explicitly decided to optimize I’ll say out loud something like “This doesn’t actually really matter.” and that tend to help me make a “good enough” decision and move on.
3. I will be happier once I’ve made my decision and locked it in- studies have shown that if you have the ability to change your decision that you will be less satisfied with it than if you were locked in to it. Also making decisions is stressful so leaving them open is going to make you less happy. So picking a dress at a store that doesn’t do returns is better (by which I mean you will both like the dress more and be generally happier) than buying a dress with the idea that you can come back and exchange it for another dress if you decide to later is better than buying both dresses with the thought that you will return the one you like last later.
A decision can be hard because the possible outcomes are finely balanced in expected payoff, or because you are quite lacking in knowledge about the possibly outcomes and/or their likelihood. If it’s the latter then it can be hard and matter a lot! For effective altruists there can be a bit of both. “Should I buy this pen or this other one? A better pen might help me write more effectively!” is probably the former, but “What career should I choose?” is probably the latter.
Plus, the latter kind of decision holds the promise of high value of information. If only you devote a bit more time to thinking about it or researching, you might improve your estimates a lot (or not). So that’s another incentive to worry about and delay such a decision.
I totally agree, Michael!
There are also decisions that are: hard, important, you don’t have enough information, AND the cost of getting more information is too high. Especially if you did this thought experiment: If I tried to optimize every decisions of a similar level of importance as this one, how much would I actually accomplish?
Even for career decisions, once you’ve narrowed it down to a handful that meet your criteria, there needs to come a time when you just pick one and run with it. Especially considering that a lot of the information that is very important is also very hard to get (It’s hard to know how good of a fit you can be for a job until you’ve actually done it for a while)
Great points Erica, thanks! I’ve been using very similar ways of thinking recently, actually, and it’s helped a lot.
One thing I’ve found, though, is that it’s easy to reflectively know that all of these points are true, but still not believe them on an emotional level, and so still find it difficult to make decisions. I think the main thing that’s helped me here is just time and persistence—I’m gradually coming to believe these things on a more gut level the more times I do just make a decision, even though I’m not certain, and it turns out ok. I think this is a classic situation where your system 2 can believe something, but your system 1 needs repeated experience of the thing actually happening—decisions you’re not certain of turning out ok, in this case—to really internalise it.