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Often the most stressful part of making a decision is the possibility of making the wrong choice. We spend hours pondering the “what ifs” and soliciting advice from confidants. |
Ruth Chang, professor of philosophy at Rutgers University, said we devote too much energy searching for the answer out in the world, when really it must come from within.
“The world throws up reasons for going one way as opposed to the other, but when you weigh the reasons, they’re silent as to which direction you should go,” Chang said.
An expert in reasoning and values, Chang shared her advice for sound decision-making. Below is an edited transcript.
Q: What are the first two steps when making a tough decision?
A: What most people do is to first figure out what matters to them and then gather information, such as the pros and cons of each outcome. Now, some think these are the only steps, and they’ll keep trying to find more information about which decision is better, assuming that will settle the case. It won’t.
Q: Why not?
A: More information doesn’t help. It’s irrelevant. People shouldn’t beat their head against the wall trying to find out more about the outcomes because there’s so much they can’t know. It’s not like you can flip a coin between them.
Q: Isn’t one alternative always ultimately going to be better?
A: No. It’s common for people to think that having one superior outcome is just a fact in the world, and there’s the assumption that everything containing value has to be lineally ordered. That might work for lengths and weights, but it doesn’t work for values. One outcome will be better in some ways, the other better in other ways. That’s what I think of as an important third step: recognition. The world doesn’t have the answer to what you should do.
Q: If neither outcome is necessarily better, why not just flip a coin?
A: Flipping a coin is like drifting. You’re not exercising your normative power (or) putting your agency behind an option and creating reasons for yourself about why to pursue that option. If you always face hard choices this way, you’ll never be the author of your life.
Q: And the other steps?
A: The next step is to reflect on what you can be for. Think about a soldier who is considering leaving his job in the military to start his own business. He’s torn between continuing a stable life for his family or quitting his job to take a risk that might make him happier and his family better off. He has to evaluate the options and decide which he can most accept. When you identify what you can be for, the final step is to commit. You have to throw yourself behind that option and let it become part of who you are.
Q: Is it still of use to solicit advice from others?
A: Absolutely. Asking trusted advisers what they think also often sheds light on how you should understand the options. The opinions of other people and the impact our choices will have on them affect our thinking, but ultimately you have to make a decision for yourself.
Q: What if you see you made the wrong choice?
A: First, ask yourself how is it that you realised it’s wrong. If both alternatives were on par, you didn’t make a mistake of reason, but you may have made one of inauthenticity. Think of the soldier again. Say he decides to leave the military and start his own business, and three years into it, he feels it’s not who he really is. Maybe he threw his agency behind new values, like creativity and risk, abandoning security. When he was reflecting, he could’ve had a self-deceptive image of himself as an innovative entrepreneur, when in fact, that’s not who he is. It was just a story he tells himself. The other explanation could be that you changed. Things that you care about evolve over time. It’s not right to say you made a mistake. It was who you were, and now you’ve changed, so now you can commit to something else.
