It doesn’t exist. It doesn’t really.
I can say that now, though earlier in my life I would agonize for weeks, months even, looking for it. Now, in my professional life I regularly see people who are looking for it. Sometimes we make a little headway and they leave partially convinced that it doesn’t exist, but most still leave as believers, despite what they say to my face. And because of that, their agonizing and paralysing search continues.
It doesn’t exist. It really doesn’t. There is no such thing as a perfect decision. There are decisions which may seem good, or bad, at the time, but perfection in decision making is a forever elusive actuality.
Of course, the reasons for seeking it are understandable. We are fallible human beings living in an imperfect world in relationship with other fallible human beings. That means that there is inevitably pain around. We naturally want to avoid the pain, or at worst, reduce its magnitude. We naturally want to be able to control the future, and to some extent, making a decision is a reasonable stab at doing just that. If we invest money in a reliable bank, or invest relationship in a trustworthy individual we are hedging our bets against loss and hoping for gain (or at least, no deterioration of the status quo) over time.
The trouble is that in seeking to make good and wise decisions, we sometimes want to over-stretch our powers and go for perfection, forgetting our humanity, and vainly striving to be gods. If only we could know if this was the right car to buy, this was the right person to get a joint mortgage with, this was the right job to take …
Because we cannot know the future and can only do little to control it, the concept of a perfect decision becomes meaningless. We can tell ourselves that we have made a perfect decision about a job, only to find that in a year’s time we are extremely unhappy because of work changes or that we have been made redundant. And we can tell ourselves that we have found the perfect partner, only to find that ten years and two children down the line (s)he has had at least one affair that we know about. Neither of those unforeseen outcomes mean that we didn’t make a good decision. We may have made a good decision at the time, given the circumstances we were in and the information available. A perfect decision would have to take account of all possible circumstances and information - past, present, and future - and that can never all be known.
Some people are paralysed in decision making because things often aren’t clear cut. There are good and bad points about most issues. However, some people hope that if they wait, things will become clear and that the points on one side will suddenly grow or disappear making the choice obvious. So they don’t make a decision - at least that’s what they tell themselves, but ironically they are, in fact, making a decision not to decide - and they procrastinate. Of course, after gathering new information, things may become clearer on one side or the other, but they will never be perfectly clear; there will always be some ambiguity.
Here are some tips about making important decisions:
- Accept that you are a fallible human being living in an imperfect world and that you will never make a perfect decision - so stop beating yourself up trying to do the impossible.
- Leave yourself time to gather as much information as you need to make a reasonable informed choice.
- Set a reasonable time limit for gathering the information that you need. You could spend years gathering tiny bits of information and there will always be more, but by and large, you will know most of what you need to know of the essential stuff in a relatively short time. Set a clear boundary on your search. Set a date for deciding.
- Having gathered the evidence, make the best decision you can at the time - on the balance of probability - in the present circumstances with the evidence available to you.
- Try to accept the fact that you cannot control the future and that if things turn out badly for you, 1) it doesn’t necessarily mean that you made a bad decision, 2) you can make other decisions to change the present that you now find yourself in, and 3) you will learn from this experience when you make future choices. The initial decision you made doesn’t mean that things are set in concrete. You can decide to change them.
Great blog and the list of things to consider here are very helpful at the end. It ties the whole blog up nicely.
Two things leap out at me to want to comment about.
1) Decisions: ” we only make good decisions at the time.”
I disagree. I think it should be phrased that sometimes, given what we know now, the decision could have been a bad one. You can’t say a decision was good when it wasn’t, becuase you have since learnt something, or matured as a more responsible thinking person. And on reflection that means it should still be called good, when it wasn’t
2) ” You can only do little to control the future.”
Again I disagree. I think we have much more potential than we realise to change and shape our future dramatically. If we take certain health measures, for example, we can drastically change the course of our health long term. If we choose to follow a path, that is not pushing the self-destruct button, eg, change our choice of violent partners, and see where our potential low self-esteem can lead us, we may prevent furture abuse and violence in such a damaging relationship. The power of positive thinking can stop us becoming life long victims to this sway or that in our lives. No, we can not predict or necessarly change somethings but we can do a lot to influence them. I don’t believe such a fatalistic view that our future is set in stone, so there is little that can be done.
I think the point on procrastination is an excellent one and I am trying to avoid being one myself, when I have done just that in the past.
Overall an excellent blog and one which gives us plently to think about.
I would suggest that it’s asking for trouble to base any important decision on someone else’s tips (including this tip of mine
).
The points that onethoughtfulwoman makes are good ones. Also, I wonder whether many people seriously aim for perfection or the avoidance of pain. Just now I cannot think of anyone — family, friend, colleague, patient — who does that.
It’s easy, though, to think of people who aim for much less than they could have, or who accept unnecessary pain. And I guess that’s often what inhibits decision-making. Even when the facts are clear, there can be an unspoken assumption (”I don’t deserve that. It’s too easy.”) that gets in the way.
Thanks for the post. You’re right, there’s no such thing as a perfect decision. The tyranny of perfect decision-making is probably a remnant, for some of us, of our christian past, who used to be so accustomed to searching for ‘the Lord’s will’.
onethoughtfulwoman
I agree with your first point, and have edited the sentence accordingly. It was a slip of the pen
I think I agree with part of your second point. We are arguing degree here. I accept that we can do things that influence our futures, but control is elusive. You may eat right, have a healthy body, and then be an innocent victim in a car accident. I accept the substance of your point - we are just differing over semantics.
cbtish
Thanks for dropping by. We differ, and I am cool with that.
Tips are tips that people are free to ignore or differ with. Most of the big decisions I made often involved thought about consequences, and consequences usually involved thinking about cost and ‘emotional pain’.
temaskian
I agree wholeheartedly about the tyranny of God’s perfect will hanging over your shoulder (or over your marriage). I did think about having a paragraph on it, but didn’t in the end. Perhaps I should have done.
There is A LOT to be learned from your article. But the first thing that got my attention was that you’re saying that delaying making decisions is procrastination.
Interestingly enough, letting situations linger until decisions are made by themselves is one of the premises of Taoism. I am not saying that you are right or wrong. It just strikes me as interesting that an ancient philosophy that still has lots of followers would promote such a thing.
As for the rest, I found this piece of wisdom worth keeping,
A perfect decision would have to take account of all possible circumstances and information - past, present, and future - and that can never all be known.
I so agree. We just can never know. Furthermore, if we did know, we would see that everyone of our possible decisions will lead us to one kind of pain or another. Life is what it is and pain is unavoidable, as you said.
Anyway, great post!
‘Interestingly enough, letting situations linger until decisions are made by themselves is one of the premises of Taoism. I am not saying that you are right or wrong. It just strikes me as interesting that an ancient philosophy that still has lots of followers would promote such a thing.’
Deciding not to take action for the moment is also a decision.
In my life, I’ve learnt that sometimes taking the wrong action is worse than taking no action at all. Sometimes. It all depends on the situation.
For example, in chess, there’s something called maintaining the tension, ie just let the situation build up but be ready to pounce on the solution once it’s available.
Lorena
I don’t think I am saying that delaying decisions, per se, is procrastination. If I am, I certainly didn’t intend to.
Here’s what I wanted to say:
* Delaying decisions indefinitely in the belief that a perfect one can be made is a form of procrastination.
* It is sometimes good to wait, but it is also good to set a sensible limit on waiting.
Thanks for helping me clarify.