What am I Doing With My Life? Part II

August 9th, 2007

In the first part of What am I Doing With My Life? , I talked about facing different future choices and the first step in the Pros-Cons-Fix method. Today we’ll look at the remaining steps and make a decision based on the results.

I’m trying make a decision between four possible futures:

Go back to school for an MBA or a PhD
Join the Peace Corps
Join Ycombinator
Stay at my current job

In step 1 you list each option and write down every positive thing that you can think of for it.

Step 2: Cons

In step two, create another list for each option and write down all the negatives. Here are the results for my options:

Life Choices: Cons

Education	Peace Corps	Ycombinator	Status Quo
-not efficient -less free time -takes at least 2 years -some investment required	-takes 2 years -lose approx $52,000 net income -may not actually help	-may not get accepted -requires move	-relies on my own motivation -no change in routine

Step 3: Fixes

Up till now, we’ve just used a pretty standard approach that most people do intuitively when making a decision: creating a list of positives and negatives for each option. The interesting part comes in now. Going over your list of Cons, figure out a Fix for each one (if possible). Write the Fix next to the Con in your list. If you can’t find a Fix for a given Con, just write “no fix”.

This is what my table looks like after adding fixes:

Life Choices: Fixes

Ed: Cons	Ed: Fixes	PC: Cons	PC: Fixes	YC: Cons	YC: Fixes	SQ: Cons	SQ: Fixes
-not efficient -less free time -takes at least 2 years -some investment required	-eliminate inefficiency -no fix -no fix -no fix	-takes 2 years -lose approx $52,000 net income -may not actually help	-no fix -other income opportunities -up to self to make it help	-may not get accepted -requires move	-no fix -no fix	-relies on my own motivation -no change in routine	-reach out to others -create an environment that encourages change

Step 4: Decide!

Now re-list your pros and cons for each option not including the cons with fixes, and make your decision based only on those values. Here is my final table:

Life Choices: Final Pros and Cons

Ed: Pros	Ed: Cons	PC: Pros	PC: Cons	YC: Pros	YC: Cons	SQ: Pros	SQ: Cons
-enforced learning -networking opportunities -tuition reimbursed	-less free time -takes at least 2 years -some investment required	-adventure and new experiences -entrepreneur opportunities -helps others -promotes positive US image	-takes 2 years -may not actually help	-jump start entrepreneur -very intense learning -as exciting as you can get -possibility of making it big time	-may not get accepted -requires move	-steady income -time to work on projects -good relationship -flexible according to my interests -it's a good life	-none

The one thing this table reveals to me is that going back to school seems like a poor choice. It has the least concrete positives and the most concrete negatives. School for me is a fall back option that I really only consider when I feel like I am not getting anywhere.

This is also an unusual set of options in that two options depend on my being accepted into a program, and I would gladly take either of them if I was accepted. To be completely useful, I probably should have included a “Bootstrap My Own Business” option, which would replace my status quo option. It’s a slower result, but also a fairly good one.

The real benefit of this approach, aside from getting us to explicitly consider the positives and negatives of each option, is removing extraneous negatives that can cloud our decision making process.

I considered the same issue from a values based point of view in What Am I Doing With My Life: Follow Up.

-zot

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