The Decision Strategist

Every Shtikl Counts has a post decrying the use of plans. I think he’s right that you don’t need big plans, but small plans jotted down on a 3×5 index card in a flash of inspiration are incredibly useful.

I think what the post is really trying to say is don’t spend too much time planning. I’m guilty of planning and planning and never getting to the point of launching or even working on my idea. This is may be the only 100% sure way to fail.

I’ve taken to asking myself if I know what the next three steps are; if I do, there is no need to plan.

(edit 9/01/07): Reading over this is seems a little incomplete. It’s always helpful to me to have a goal I’m working toward and a general plan of attack outlined in my head, even if I don’t write it down on paper.

-zot

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A reader left a comment on What am I Doing with My Life? Follow Up with a great suggestion. Here is part of Bob’s comment:

Have you thought of doing a values clarification exercise as part of this process? It starts with listing all your values, then ranking them in importance to you. Then, when an option or event involves two or more of your values in conflict, you will have a new level of clarity of which value to uphold and a new level of objectivity about why you are violating one of your lesser values. This is a great way to reduce the stress and “drag” associated with highly complex circumstances.

This is a really great idea. I’ve done a Primary Life Goals post, but I haven’t explicitly written about my values here.

I followed the procedure Bob describes above, but to list all my values I used the exercise described in Steve Pavlina’s How to discover your life purpose. I modified it slightly so that instead of focusing on life purpose, I’m focusing on personal values.

After getting my list of values, I grouped them into similar categories:

List of Values

I decided to go with a top seven values, ranked in importance. I figure seven because there are lots of fun ways you can refer to seven, such as “The Magnificent Seven” or “Values List Seven”. Also, since I have six groups, having seven top values lets me pick the most important from each group and have one extra slot. I think usually people say to go with five though.

So choosing seven and then ranking them in a simple pareto analysis, I come up with the following ordered list of values:

1. Integrity.
2. Creativity.
3. Connections.
4. Adventure.
5. Personal Growth.
6. Service.
7. Conservation.

This was an extremely difficult process. Typically things just jump out at you when using these techniques, but each of my values resonated so strongly that I had a hard enough time choosing them. Ranking them was nearly impossible!

In the end I ended up ranking them backwards. By choosing the seventh slot first, I was able to come up with a ranking system that I was satisfied with.

I’m still not convinced of it though. If I faced a situation in which I had to choose between working at a very automated job for the rest of my life or acting with integrity, I don’t know that I would choose the option with integrity.

Values are a very fluid thing, but Bob is absolutely write in suggesting that I need to have a defined values list before I go about trying to figure out what I’m going to do with my life.

If I wanted to be more sure of the order of the list, I’d do a sort of paired comparison of each value.

Has anyone else done work like this to determine their values? I know that The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has a method like this for determining your personal values. I’d be really interested to hear what values lists my readers have come up with, and what process they used to develop them.

-zot

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I thought Blog Day was a great idea to start with, but considering the implications of automatic associations and the benefits of beings exposed to different ideas, I’m even more excited. Here are five blogs with some different perspectives, but are all well done and interesting. So without further ado:

• Conservative Thoughts. Interesting posts from a slightly non-rabid but still conservative point of view.
• Life Under The Sun. A modest and very unstereotypical take on Christianity in the life of one family.
• A Souther Girls Guide To Almost Anything. Honestly I’m not sure, but some of it is pretty funny.
• The Temas Blog. Very interesting posts on latin america focusing on environment and health.
• The Mex Files. “Mexican art, history, culture, politics, economics, news, some travel and the general weirdness that usually comes blowing in from the north”. In depth and goo.d

-zot

You can find more information by visiting Blog Day or Blog Day 2007.

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I have never, until today, understood the appeal of twitter. But I just followed my first twitterer: Guy Kawasaki, and I’m suddenly made very aware of how powerful it is.

Basically in your personal time line you see all the updates from anyone you’ve chosen to follow. If you need to make decisions as a group or have group discussions (not in real-time, then you could just use pidgin) it is extremely easy to get something to all of your followers. All you have to do is post an update and everyone will see it. The great thing is you can post an update from your phone or from IM or on the web.

“But Zot”, you say, “why go through the trouble, why not have a conference call?” Sometimes decisions that need to be made need to be discussed, a variety of options need to be considered, and it may be difficult or unnecessary to get everyone together at the same time. Imagine how useful this would be to a small startup with employees scattered over the globe. No need for someone to be awake at odd hours, and everyone can participate.

I have in mind something like this, but with an explicit structure for facilitating decision making and problem solving.

Go forth and twitter. If you want to follow me you can find me here. Leave a comment and I’ll follow you too.

-zot

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