A decision coach's approach to making hard decisions

left in the family's garage. "It told me you've no make me cry."

“Antonio Junior left home to join a protest in Seattle. A week later, he was shot and killed there.”

"I need some a ref me, just as for my son." Listen to "We keep us safe" on the embedded podcast from NPR. "You're listening to life kit." "From NPR." "Hey, it's Mario. Normally my intros for episodes come together pretty quickly. But for some

reason I got my head about this one, I was trying to drum up an anecdote for you. A time I was struggling with a big decision. I was like, do I talk about health stuff? Not too personal for this one. What about a breakup? Yeah, let's not judge all that up. What about my friends breakup? I had someone in mind, but they definitely listened to this podcast and they would know I was talking about them. So I went over to Tony Cabin's desk. He's the managing editor of standards and practices at NPR.

Ask him to brainstorm with me. And he pointed out the obvious irony here. I can't make a decision about this episode, which is about decision-making. See, sometimes you get stuck in your head, trap between all the options, and you just need an outside perspective. That's the job of people like Tony, editors, and people like Nell McShane Wolf Heart. If you've ever agonized over a decision, maybe for days on end, you've gone back and forth

a million times, looked at every possible angle until you finally threw up your arms and yelled

into the ether. Somebody just decide for me. Nell is that person. She's a professional decision coach and has been for more than a decade." Well, I invented the job, actually. I've just always been the person that friends and family came to for very straightforward advice, and if someone, even a perfect stranger, start telling me about their problems, my brain just goes right to work,

figuring out what it is that they should do. And eventually, my best friend said, very kindly, stop telling me what to do. Maybe other people want to hear this. And it turns out that she was right. Nell specializes in helping people make big, potentially future shifting, fork in the road decisions. I'd say there's about four main categories. A lot of career stuff, like, should I take this job off her? A lot of location things, romantic relationships, should I break

“up with this person? Very, very big topic of discussion around here. And should I have a kid?”

Nell is very clear about what she is not. As in, she is not a therapist or a behavioral scientist. So, I only do one thing. I offer a single session in which I help somebody make a big or a small decision. She says an hour is usually all it takes to find an answer, no matter how big or complicated the decision may seem. I have found in general most people know, but they don't know that they know. You know, sometimes it just takes talking to a complete stranger or a third

party or a coach to help pull them out of it and get them on their way. And this episode of LifeKit, less debating, more decision-making. Reporter Andy Tagle is going to talk with Nell about how to understand your personal relationship with risk-taking, how to make speedier decisions, and how to deal with any post-decision regret. One year after Congress eliminated federal funding for public media and PR remains committed

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non-existent. You know, omelette or pancakes, which podcast do I start on my run at college? Sure, or a plane tea, you know? What's going on there? Exactly. Now, can you speak to the role of

regret in our lives, whether it's real or imagined? Oh, regret is so powerful. I mean, the decision-making

business is really just the regret minimization business. You know, everyone is trying so hard to avoid

decisions faster, especially omelette versus pancakes or whatever, something like that, you know,

we just have to accept that, yes, occasionally we will regret our choice. And it's inevitable, but you are going to regret it so much more if you spend a half an hour deciding on

“that particular breakfast, or if you spend a year trying to figure out if you should go to grad school,”

or three years deciding if you should get engaged. I've just found that people regret the time they have lost deciding so much more than the occasional decision that they made too hastily. You know, so in general, I would say that we can eliminate a lot of regret by just moving faster. The pain of lost time hurts more than the pain of regret, usually. Yes, many, many more people regret taking too long to make a decision than making a decision too quickly. What if you feel the

opposite, you know, if you're going to a decision coach, then you're probably dealing with intense in decision. But if you feel like you jump too quickly to make a decision, how can you slow down? I often don't want to deal with this discomfort of not knowing, so making a decision in the short-term feels good, but then I'll regret not thinking through it more. I would say that in general, I would not encourage people to decide more slowly. And I've found, in general, that the amount of

time you spend making a decision does not really correlate with the quality of the decision itself. You know, like after a certain amount of time, more thinking, more googling around for articles, more soliciting opinions from friends and family is not adding anything to the decision. Actually, it's just making the decision harder and it's making your life worse. And I often recommend that

“people who struggle with indecisiveness, you should take the amount of time that you think you need”

to make a decision and cut it in half. What now is describing here, is the difference between two different polls of decision makers. Maximizers and satisfisers. These are the terms often used in psychology circles. If you're a maximizer, you might be more likely to suffer indecision, because you're the type that seeks the best possible outcome. Chase perfection. That's not a bad thing, but it often means spending a lot of time spending your wheels, deliberating, considering

every option. Research has shown that maximizers can and do make good choices. One study found they tend to land jobs with higher starting salaries, for example. But maximizers are also found to be less satisfied in those roles. Higher rates of maximization have also been correlated to higher rates of regret and social comparison. Satisfisers, on the other hand, find contentment with the good enough option. Hence the contraction of the words, satisfy and suffice. They make decisions

that meet their basic requirements, but without always considering all the information available,

which means they might sometimes be hasty and miss out on better opportunities, but are also more likely to be happy with whatever choice they make. Nell's take, and takeaway one, is to aim for the best of both worlds. Make smart decisions promptly, based only on the relevant data available to you. Not what ifs or a bunch of outside opinions. Then, to minimize regret, separate that choice from the outcome that follows. We are just taking our best possible guests at the time with the

information that we have. Sometimes that thing is not going to work out. It turns out your new boss is a micromanager. It turns out that your new apartment has rats. I mean, take your choice. And those

“things are things that what it was impossible to know when you are making the decision. So I think”

people who feel less regret are people who are able to say, "Okay, I made the best decision I could with the information I had at the time, and this outcome I couldn't know in advance." Let's talk about then how to make good decisions quickly. Let's talk about what that process might look like with your clients. Can you spell that out? I know the first step is understanding your values, right? Absolutely. These are two exercises. I give every client anybody can do

these at home and just use them as like a shorthand for making your decisions. First is to make list of your values, not, you know, moral values or corporate values, whatever they are, but just

like the things that make your life good on a daily basis. So mine includes never setting it a

alarm clock, being able to wear sweatpants all the time, being in warm weather, like these kinds of things. So you make the list of your values, try to put them in order of importance if possible. And then when you're making a decision, you can literally go down the list and see which one of your options checks more boxes on that list of values. That's often an easy way to figure out like, "Oh, this decision is right for me. It's more in line with who I am." The second exercise is to

imagine yourself in the future. Now I will say that everybody hates doing this exercise. Like they really struggle with it. I also struggle with it. Humans are very bad at picturing what they want in their future, but I would say sketch out one year ideal life, five years ideal life, ten years ideal life. And then you can just take the options that you're deciding between and

Or is it more of like a wavy line? Like, "Oh, well, I could take this job and do that for a while

“and maybe that would get me into this company and then I could try and start this project,”

then I would eventually get to this part and I could start my own business." That's a very wavy line. But there's often an option on that list where you can draw just a straight line. If I had to make this choice I can get much closer to the future that I want, just do that one. Could you give us an example of what that might look like? Sure. Yeah, I had a client maybe a year ago who when I asked her to sketch out her future in five years she wanted to have her own successful

business. She wanted to be a business owner. Now at the time she was employed, she was an employee, and the decision she was calling me about was that she had a job offer that was in her field and better paid and more prestigious should you take that job offer. Look, on paper, that seems like an easy decision, of course, like just take the job offer. But when we talked about in five years she wanted to have a successful thriving business of her own, a business that was so successful

she could take time off to spend time with her kids when she wanted or to take long vacations.

She didn't actually have time to leave her first job, go to the second job, get settled in,

do well, save some money and then start building up her own business. Five years is not that long. You know, we have less time than we think. So the second option was to not take the job offer and either quit her job and start her freelance business immediately or to stay in this job, which wasn't very demanding and to start her business on the side and then get to that five-year point. But either way, the idea was to be able to draw a straight line from the choice she was

making, to the thing that she actually wanted. Take way too. When faced with a big decision, start by listing out the things in your life that you value most. In order of importance, if you can. Then, think about future you. Where do you want to be? One year, five years, ten years from now. Nelson, the most direct route to that ideal future you, is likely the best choice. So, really try to game that out. Like for that one client of hers. We decided that she should stay

in her current job, which was like really endimanding the sort of job where she could take like a long, leisurely nap after lunch to save money and to start working very hard at building her own business in her free time. That to take that time that she would normally spend like having a post lunch nap or walking the dog or knocking off early and while she was still making that salary to go all in on building her own business, so that in five years she could actually

have the thing that she wanted. More life kit in a moment.

“Each story you hear on planet money starts with a question. What happens if we refund tariffs?”

Why are grocery so expensive? And if you are, we stand for your right to be curious, because the forces shaping our world can be hard to see. Follow NPR's planet money wherever you get your podcasts and start seeing how the economy really works. Another thing that I really like is the idea that you can you can test things out. You don't just have to sit in the in the what if, right? You don't just have to sit in the what might it be like.

Can you can you speak a little to that? Yes, huge, huge fan of testing things out and I feel like people can test that a lot more things than they think. You know, the way we make good decisions is just not by sitting at home and wondering if we're going to like something, right? It is by trying to thing out and then we have actual like tangible data that tells us whether or not we write, you know, we like something. So somebody wants to start a business.

Great. You can spend six months thinking about the business you'll start wondering if you're going to like it and hoping people are going to pay you for it. Or you can spend those six months testing the waters starting it in a small way and by the end of the six months you will actually know if people will pay you for this thing that you want to sell or if you like doing it or if you like being an entrepreneur. So the same amount of time will have gone by but you have so much more

information. You can make like a real decision out of knowledge just not out of guesswork. Take away three. If you're stuck between a rock and a hard place, get creative with your problem solving. Don't just wonder, try the thing. Gather some data to help make your decision off of. Give yourself a deadline so you don't endlessly feel around in the dark and in that time maybe try to look for new approaches. Now says she's a big fan of third, fourth, and fifth

options. It doesn't always have to come down to assemble this or that yes or no.

“If somebody is wondering like okay should I stay at my job or should I quit to stay with my kids?”

Okay have you asked if you can go part-time? Have you thought about maybe just doing some consulting gigs independently and being able to still bring in some money and still have flexible schedule?

sort of dip a toe in or find a middle ground that really might suit you better.

“Can you talk about assessing risk? You know people's internal risk thermostat. How does that come into play?”

So I coached a woman who was in her early 20s and she was thinking about dropping out of college. And on the surface it seems like a really risky move. You know she was almost finished. She was going to get this degree. Her mom really wanted her to stay in college. In fact she was afraid to tell her mom that she was thinking about dropping out. And I could have spent the whole session telling her well you know you're almost there keep going staying college etc etc but

when I after I talked to her for a while and I probed a little bit and I asked a bunch of questions it was clear that she wasn't going to stay in college that she had already somewhere inside

made up her mind about this decision and I found that in general even when it comes to things

that feel risky people are going to do what they want to do and my only job is to like pull out of them the thing that they want and then to essentially write them a permission slip and tell them it's okay to do that thing because most of the time the thing that you want to do and the thing that you ought to do are the same thing. The thing that you want to do and the thing you ought to do are the same thing. Why is that? The thing that you ought to do is often the thing that is more

exciting that is more adventurous that really serves your true self and people want to do those things. It's inside them that they want to do it but it can be layered over with you know other people's opinions and societal expectations and things like that but I would say the in general if you can figure out what it is that you want to do 90% of the time you're good to go just go ahead and do that thing and it's going to work out better than if you force yourself to do

something because other people tell you it's a good idea or they think it's too risky to do the thing you actually want or society kind of frowns on it you know you're not going to be happy doing that it's not going to serve you or anybody else so if you can figure out the thing that you want I would say 90% of the time go do that thing it's the best decision. Take away for the definition of risk in any decision is often relative like should you bet all your chips on that brilliant business

idea a married parent with two school-age kids will surely have very different considerations than that of a retired widow or living on a pension or a 20 something student intern subletting an apartment. Now says record this in your personal logistics it's important to be honest with yourself about the stakes of your decision. You know when I ask them to imagine the worst case scenario if they take this new job it's really not you know they're going to be living in their

car they're going to end up in prison the most likely worst case scenario is that they're going to end up in a job that they just don't like very much and they're probably already in that scenario you know if they're interviewing for other jobs and they're taking offers they're probably already in a job that they're not that fond of so what's the actual risk in similarly

“be we're in a sunk cost fallacy now says to remember that new or unfamiliar”

doesn't always a quite high risk people think all the time about sunk costs right the time they've

already put into something the money they've invested you know the the years of building the relationship or whatever and they spend almost no time thinking about the opportunity costs that they're missing out on by staying in a situation that's not really what they want you know you're missing out on like other wonderful opportunities maybe job opportunities maybe relationship opportunities you know and you're missing out on that time you could spend really

living your life and join yourself doing the thing that you actually want but people are very attached to their sunk costs that's true it can be hard to convince them to leave those behind let's talk a little bit about other people banking decisions on your own versus in listening to advice of others is something I'm very very guilty of you know is leaning

“leaning on other people what is that a good idea honestly I think that everyone should talk to like”

three to five people when they're making a big decision and that's it by the time someone comes to me sometimes they've talked to like 10 different people or 20 different people their best friends are sick of hearing them talk about it you know they're sick of talking they're sick of talking about the decision themselves and it's just really muddying the waters you know they're not taking in any new information it's just other people's opinion it's

not really effective it's not helping you make the decision and not in Boris people to listen at a certain point three to five max you're just fitting your wheels after that 100% yeah are there best and worst people to talk to you well you really have to know your audience so you know I talked to a lot of people who are making decisions that they're maybe more traditional or conservative parents would disagree with okay so if you know that you are talking

to somebody who's values are different from yours or they don't really respect the way you live

while you are deciding in that case make the decision and then tell them that's what you've decided to do don't say like I'm thinking about you know moving to Canada just you know decide to move to Canada by the plane ticket and then inform them you'll be moving to Canada so you really have to think about your past history with everyone that you've talked to and think like okay does this person support me and give good advice and do I usually agree with how the choices they've

made to live their life or is this person negative about all my choices just like pay a little attention to your past history with these people before you decide to talk to them about a decision finally take away five you don't need the opinion or approval of everyone in your contact

“list to make a big decision if you need to talk it out seek the advice of a few of your most”

trusted objective advice givers or maybe even seek out a third party like a coach counselor or therapist and if you've done all these things and you still feel unsure or maybe if you made a choice but knife you'll some regret now it's got one last bit of advice for you I was coaching somebody who was thinking about having a kid right she didn't have any kids was a big decision she was making and she said to me well I know that I'll regret it either way and I thought this was like

really great this is almost a revelation you know when it comes to making a big decision you are going to regret it either way you know there's going to be a small amount of regret no matter what it is that you decide to do but if you can accept the idea that they'll be regret either way and accept that this is kind of a liberating idea you know it sounds bad it sounds depressing like again we're trying to avoid regret at all costs but if we know that there's going to be

some regret either way I think it frees us up to make like bigger and more adventurous decisions now if you're going to feel bad whether you do the exciting thing or the careful thing like you might as well do the exciting thing and see what see what happens now my channel will fart thanks so much thanks so much for having me okay let's recap take away one don't

“spend longer than you need to thinking about big decisions aim to make smart decisions promptly”

by using only the relevant data available to you not what ifs or a bunch of outside opinions once you made your choice separate it from the outcome that follows the decision is within your

control the outcome not always take away two when faced with a big decision start by assessing

your values and your future plans what's most important to you right now and in the future the choice that helps you draw the straightest line from who you are now to who you want to be is likely the right decision take away three get creative with your problem solving don't just wonder try the thing gather some data to make your decision off of take away four the definition of risk in any decision is often relative regardless of your personal logistics it's important to be honest

with yourself about the stakes of your decision and finally take away five you don't need the

“opinion or approval of everyone in your contact list to make a big decision and remember if you're”

stuck between two hard choices that's probably because there's both good and bad on both sides that was life kit reporter Andy Tagle one last thing would you consider rating and reviewing us it helps us grow the show here's a review that I liked from listener f walter eight nineteen having learned many of these lessons the hard way I recommend life kit instead and for all the lessons

they cover that I never learned thanks better late than never to true f walter leave us a review in your

podcast app right now this episode of life kit was produced by Claire Marie Schneider Malica Griebe is our digital editor and our visuals editor is CJ Rekelon Megan Kane is our senior supervising editor and Lauren Gonzalez is our executive producer our production team also includes Andy Tagle and Margaret Sereno engineering support comes from Jimmy Keely and Sinole Frado I'm Mary Al Sigada thanks for listening every story from shortwave and pure science podcast starts with a question like why do we have

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