We humans need to get serious about how we make decisions. Because we’re running out of time.

We are in a critical moment in human history. You feel it, right? Social polarization is intense. Important political institutions seem fragile. The environment is hurting. Mental health is at an all-time low.

Plus I’m tired of other people - many of them strangers - messing with my head, messing with my life. You feel the same. I know it. I see it on TikTok every f’ing day.

Something big has to happen. Like a paradigm shift. Which is why I’m saying we need to get serious about how we make our choices. Because decisions got us to where we are, and decisions can get us to where we want to go. And one decision… your next decision… can turn it all around.

Decisions are powerful.

A lot of our hardships are due to poor decision-making. Marry the wrong person, and you won’t be happy. Choose the wrong career, and you could be miserable. Buy the wrong home and you could live with regret for years.

A lot of us live with a lot of regret.

Some of our struggles and successes we owe to other people’s decisions. Our parents’ choices can make or break our lives. Teachers and bosses make choices each day that determine where we end up. Politicians and business leaders across the globe shape our circumstances and constrain our options.

The choices of people long dead also leave marks. Your parents’ parents’ parents made decisions about where to live and what to do for a living, the consequences of which have created the options available to you today. The political and economic systems that shape your reality are a product of choices made centuries ago. The state of our climate? That didn’t happen overnight. Old decisions are largely responsible for this too.

A lot of people (including us) have made bad choices, and those choices have put a lot of us in bad situations. Decisions are that powerful.

But if we make good choices… if we commit to taking decision-making seriously and doing it well… we can fix what isn’t working and live better lives. We can be happier individuals living on a happier planet.

Decisions are that powerful.

We can’t wing it.

Humans aren’t wired to make good decisions a lot of the time. Our brains are part of the issue: they crave efficiency because they need to save energy (they take up 2% of our body mass but burn 20% of our fuel). Efficiency is great, but it causes us to jump to conclusions with insufficient information. It forces us to assume things that aren’t true. It drives us to take shortcuts we can’t afford to take.

Every upside comes with a downside.

Our feelings also drive us into poor decision-making. We can be impulsive when we need to slow down and think. We make choices to feel better even when the outcomes are terrible. We can’t ignore our emotions: they give us valuable information about how we’re doing. But every upside comes with a downside.

Our social environments also impact us. We choose options that aren’t good for us in order to belong. In order to not stand out. In order to convince ourselves and others that we’re valuable. We can’t ignore our social world: we are social creatures by nature, and we can’t survive without other people. But every upside comes with a downside.

The downsides get in our way more often than we are aware, which means that when it comes to making decisions, we can’t wing it. We have to take this shit seriously. We have to look to the science.

Decision science.

Decision science is the study of human decision making. It involves two major components: analysis of information that allows for ideal decision-making; and the study of how people actually make decisions, which isn’t often good.

In business or public policy (where most decision scientists work), decision scientists gather data, crunch numbers, and do fancy statistics to determine things like how risky a choice is, whether the pros of a decision outweigh the cons, how possible it is for an option to even happen, and so on. These types of analyses are sophisticated, making them tough for most to grasp.

But the principles underlying these analyses aren’t hard to understand, especially when they’re explained in a simple way. Once you get the hang of them, you can apply them to your everyday life to make better choices about pretty much everything, from which car to buy to whether or not you should dump your partner, quit your job, move to another city, and become a social media influencer.

Half of my work’s mission is to simplify complex decision science analyses so you can benefit from them. So you can apply them to your everyday choices. So you can live a better life.

The second half of my work’s mission is to simplify and share research on decision behavior, to explain why we humans mess up our decisions so we can find ways to do it better. This includes an examination of the cognitive biases and mental shortcuts (called heuristics) that cause us to draw inaccurate conclusions about the world. The kinds of conclusions that force us to dive headfirst into bad choices.

If you’re familiar with behavioral economics, then you’re familiar with what I’m talking about.

But behavioral economists aren’t the only experts on decision behavior. Neuroscientists have learned a ton about how the brain makes choices. Researchers in psychology have too. Sociologists have discovered a lot of interesting things about how our social environments push and pull us into bad decisions - and how our decisions then shape those same social environments that constrain us. Even researchers in medicine and physiology have insights to share about how things like hormones can impact our choices.

Decision science can change your life.

Knowing how decision-making goes wrong - and how to get it right - can turn your life around. For example, according to the science, we humans too often rush into decisions believing we have enough information when we really don’t. Our brains trick us into believing we know enough. Our social environments make it easy to assume the same. So, without realizing it, we go with options we wouldn’t choose if we only knew more.

Like… I wouldn’t have chosen to move in with my first serious boyfriend if I’d known what a weed head he was. After we moved in, he quit his job. He never helped around the house. He just got high and played video games all day. Should I have known, before moving in with him, that he’d be such a drain? Maybe. Maybe not. Point is, I didn’t even try to know. He and I were always together anyway, and living together meant sharing one rent. That was all my fast-moving brain told me I needed to know.

Another major decision-making flaw is doing what people around us do. The other night I drank four strong cocktails and regretted it the next day. I did it because the person I went out with had about eight IPAs. I’m not making an excuse; I’m just saying. According to the research, other people influence us without our realizing it. We influence other people as well. My drinking buddy may have had five beers if I had stopped at two drinks. Who knows who was influencing whom? What I do know is that if you change who you spend time with, your choices can change too. For better or worse.

Knowing these glitches in decision-making - and remembering them when it counts - can help us override urges to decide too hastily (or too impulsively, or too lazily). It can also provide decision analysts (like myself) the right insight for creating decision-making blueprints that can save us all from regret, disappointment, hardship.

Own your decisions.

We are in a critical moment in human history. I know you feel it. A lot is at stake, and too many things feel shaky. Too many of us struggle with anxiety and depression. Too many of us feel hopeless if not unfulfilled.

Big problems don’t always require big solutions. Sometimes all you have to do is decide better than how your human design wants you to decide. You can own your choices, override the natural human tendencies that hold you back, and create a better life for yourself.

You can turn it around. Yes, you. Decisions are that powerful. All you have to do is choose to do it.

Years ago, when marijuana was illegal in all 50 states, I lived with a guy who smoked weed. A lot of it. He hid it from me because he knew I wasn’t comfortable with it, and when I smelled it on him… when I asked him about it and urged him to stop… he’d get defensive. “You shouldn’t tell me what to do,” he’d say. “I should have the freedom to live the way I want to live.”

He had a point. Who was I to control his life, to dictate his choices? It felt wrong to pressure him against his will. In fact, research tells us that losing our decision-making autonomy can be psychologically painful. I didn’t want to feel uncomfortable in my own home, but I didn’t want to be an asshole. I didn’t want to come across as a tyrant.

Some would argue that even the law shouldn’t have constrained his choices, that it shouldn’t curb any of us in exercising our individual rights. This is what freedom is about, they say. This is what it means to have liberties.

He didn’t want to quit. He wasn’t going to quit. I was going to have to live with it if I was going to live with him.

Though I wasn’t sure, at that point, if I wanted to continue living with him. It was a decision I was suddenly forced to make.

Deciding whether to compromise

We all face decisions like this from time to time, these “compromise decisions”. What are we willing to give up in order to keep our friends, family members, or romantic partners? And what are we unwilling to change, even if it costs us our relationships? There’s no avoiding these questions: we aren’t all the same, don’t have the same preferences, don’t share the same hopes and dreams. And as social creatures, we all need other people. We crave other people. We can’t live without other people. Eventually, something will have to give. But what?

Compromise decisions come with high stakes. We end friendships when we don’t compromise. We end our marriages. We lose things that matter to us, that make our lives better.

But our individuality also matters. Our autonomy, our freedom, our ability to live the way we want to live is incredibly important.

All of it is so important.

Yet we don’t make compromise decisions well. We usually make them too quickly, in moments when tension arises and the issue of a compromise comes up. We are suddenly (and seemingly out of nowhere) confronted with a request to do something we don’t want to do, or to quit something we don’t want to quit, and just like that, in the moment, we react. We decide without really deciding. We automatically resist with resentment – or we go the other way, immediately caving in, because we don’t want to cause upset. We usually don’t think about the decision. We don’t take the time to consider whether our behavior is really problematic or if the demand is unreasonable.

If we do take time to consider the compromise, we usually don’t think things through objectively or consider all the evidence scientifically. We are biased. We are emotional. We are human.

But sometimes, being human isn’t good enough. Sometimes, we need science to guide us into better choices.

Externalities

From a social scientific standpoint, you cannot retain all your individual freedoms while nurturing a connection to other people. Our decisions often come with externalities, or consequences for others.

The consequences our actions have on others are often different than the consequences we experience ourselves. If we refuse to quit smoking weed, or drinking, or, let’s say, driving our partner to the airport, we get to do what we prefer to do. We get to drink. We get to smoke. We get to not have to drive to the airport. This is good for us.

But this decision has different consequences for our partner. They now must cope. They must be in a relationship with someone who drinks or smokes weed more than they’re comfortable with, and they have to figure out how to live with this. They have to find a less convenient way to get to the airport. You’ve caused them unhappiness and stress.

We’ve all experienced this kind of unhappiness and stress. We’ve all experienced the pain of negative externalities.

Externalities happen in neighborhoods too. I used to live in a condo above a neighbor who let his dogs shit all over his patio. The smell was pungent and offensive. The mess was disgusting to look at. I asked the neighbor to stop, and he agreed, but he didn’t. I get why: he worked long shifts and couldn’t be home to walk his dogs when they needed to go out. When he came home, he was too exhausted to do anything but have a couple of beers and go to sleep. His life was tough, and I felt for him. He needed to manage his life his own way, to do what made sense to him – which meant he’d pick up the dog shit on his own time, on the weekends. Who was I to tell him to do otherwise?

I was the person who wanted to enjoy her patio on the weekdays but couldn’t. That was the externality.

Own your decisions – and their externalities

Too many of us lose too much because we don’t make compromise decisions with enough thoughtfulness. And specifically, when we quickly make our compromise decisions – when we rush into deciding that no, we will not do what is asked, or yes, we will succumb – we don’t factor in the externalities of our choices with objectivity. On some level we know that our decisions impact others, but our consideration of those consequences are biased. And rushed.

Which means we too quickly make choices that protect our liberties at the expense of what’s truly good for us (like our relationships). Is it really worth damaging a connection with someone in your life so you can do what you want? This isn’t a rhetorical question; the answer isn’t necessarily “no.” It’s a decision you need to own and make.

Or on the other hand, we can too eagerly give up our autonomy for the sake of someone else’s ease, which can be harmful to us. Is it really worth losing who you are just to make someone else comfortable? This isn’t a rhetorical question; the answer isn’t automatically “no.” It’s a decision you need to slow down and think about.

A request to curb an externality isn’t removing our right to choose. We still have a choice: we just have externalities to consider as we make our decision. When we weigh the pros and cons of our compromise decisions, we need to incorporate those externalities thoughtfully. Carefully. Objectively. On a case-by-case basis.

Which means we need to slow down and think it through. Because it’s worth that kind of energy.

Don’t let impulse, emotion, or social influence make compromise decisions for you. Own them. Identify them as important decisions. Then slow down and really think about them. Otherwise, you could lose a lot. You could lose things that matter too much to you. And your life can go where you don’t want it to go.

Much of what we want in life, we must fight for. Jobs, friends, romantic partners… even when these are handed to us, to make them good, we need to struggle.

In every struggle, there are things you hope to “win”, but there are also things you risk losing. Too often, the things we risk losing keep us from fighting. Security, safety, the status quo… they can hold us back. They can knock us down.

When we gain, we often lose.

Forrest Griffin, mixed martial arts fighter and former UFC champion, tells a story in his book Got Fight about the toughest guy he ever met. One day, while in college, he was catching a ride with a “group of meatheads” (his words): guys who, like him, were trying to play football for the University of Georgia. They were driving around one afternoon when one of them had the idea to go to the University and harass some students. They spotted a young man who was 5’9” and about 120 pounds. He was wearing a button-down shirt and a pocket protector with pens crammed into it. On his face were a pair of horn-rim glasses and in his arms were a handful of books.

One of the “meatheads” jumped out of the car as it was rolling up, walked up to the student, knocked his books out of his hands, and verbally abused him while laughing. Griffin urged the bully to get back in the car, even saying the cops would show up just to get him to stop. But before he could successfully end the ugly exchange, the 120lb student charged the football player and swung wildly at him. He didn’t land one before the “meathead” knocked him down.

The blow should have ended things, but it didn’t. Instead, the student jumped back on his feet and charged the football player again. A second football player got out of the jeep, grabbed the student by the neck, and threw him down a grassy slope. The student rolled to the bottom.

That should have ended things. Despite his massive disadvantage, the student got back up, walked to the top of the hill, and cried out to his bullies, “I AM READY TO DIE!” Then, he charged again!

Once again, he got knocked down. Each time he got pummeled, he got back up. Each time he fought back, he got pummeled.

Until the “meatheads” started feeling a bit worried. They threw the student down the grassy slope one last time, then ran toward their jeep and peeled away.

Looking over his shoulder as they drove off, Griffin could see the student walk up to the top of the hill again, ready for another round. Griffin writes:

“A chill went down my spine. His face was bloody, and his button-down shirt was torn and grass-stained, but there wasn't a trace of emotion on his face. Instead of running for the police, the kid dusted himself off, put his glasses back on, and then headed casually off… hugging his books in his arms. Right then, I realized that not only was that kid the coolest guy in the world, he was the toughest son of a bitch ever to walk the face of this earth.”

In choosing to fight back, that kid stood to lose a lot. But he didn’t fear bodily harm, didn’t fear death. For him, standing up for what was right mattered more than getting hurt. What he stood to lose was less important than what he stood to gain.

What’s certain can hold us back.

For us, fighting for a better life might often involve letting go of what we already have. Security, safety, the status quo. Fighting for a better job means letting go of the one we’re in. Fighting for a better partner or better friends may mean losing who you’re with.

But too often, our fear of losing keeps us from winning. Our bias for the sure thing we have can keep us stuck, can keep us from fighting for what we really want.

Maybe risking it all – like that kid in Griffin’s story – is exactly how you win it all. Not necessarily… but the only way to know for sure is to slow down and think it through.

In future posts, I’ll explain why humans aren’t great at thinking these things through and what we can do about it. For now, remember this: it’s not always best to hang on to what you have simply because you have it. Sometimes, but not always.

Tune in for more.