Decision-Making - - Pros and Cons

As James Clear said, "Our decisions are like hats, haircuts, and tattoos," hats are easy to try on, swap in and out, throw away, or keep. Haircuts take a bit to repair, but they aren't permanent. Tattoos are permanent or, at the very least, extremely painful to change.

So, what do we do when we are making tattoo-level decisions?

We turn to our systems and tools to help us make better and more informed decisions. 

One of the classic decision-making tools, and perhaps the simplest, is a Pros and Cons list.

How to make a pros and cons decision-making tool:

Step one--take out a piece of paper and a pen

Step two--draw a line down the center of your paper

Step three--write "Pros" on the top of the left column, and write "Cons" on the top of the right column

Step four--Start writing out the advantages to the decision in the Pros column

Step five--Write out the disadvantages to the decision in the Cons column

Yes, it is really that simple. 

A Pros and Cons list is probably not a tool you want to use for life-altering decisions, but it does several things very effectively.

It creates clarity and organization around your decisions. 

Often, a decision will be looming, sometimes with a deadline, sometimes without, but we spend our time just thinking about what is good and what is bad about our decision, and it all stays in our head. We might feel great about moving forward with our idea one day, and the next day, we feel the complete opposite. When you write out your list of advantages and disadvantages, you can clearly see your thoughts right in front of you. 

This brings me to the next thing a list does effectively, it visualizes your decision.

When you write out your decision's advantages and disadvantages, you can easily compare them across the columns. Maybe you can see that the pros column is much longer than the cons column, which might make your decision easier, or perhaps the opposite is true, the cons list is much larger than the pros list. Seeing the advantages and disadvantages side-by-side may give you a better understanding of the impact of your decision. 

Of course, just because one list is longer than the other doesn't mean that you should automatically choose that decision. But often, what happens when you write out your pros and cons is that you will write out one item, and it will heavily outweigh the other items. When you see this, it makes decision-making easier because often it doesn't matter how many items are on the other side, as long as the heavily weighted item is there, that is your decision. 

A pros and cons list can help you be more objective. 

It is easy to get emotional when making a decision, and to say emotions don't play a role is a lie we tell ourselves. Decisions can be intrinsically hard exactly because of the fact that we are emotional beings. We are not robots. But when we write out pros and cons, it forces us to think about a decision from both sides of the spectrum, what is good and what is bad about the decision we are making. It forces us to be real with ourselves and mindful of the role emotions play. 

Pros and cons lists are effective in their simplicity. They force you to think through your decision, and they make you write out your thought process. They are by no means perfect (no decision-making tool is), but they are a good tool to have in your toolbelt of decision-making tools.