The Decision Strategist

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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We use metaphors all the time. Not just to create pretty language, but in our thoughts and decision making as well. in How To Fight Advertising, I talked about an exercise I had tried that involved examining the stories we like to tell about ourselves. Recognizing those stories lets us realize when advertisers are using those stories to try and sell us something.

That is a specific example of how we use metaphors in our daily lives, but I think we use metaphors in virtually everything.

Metaphors for Life Goals

One of my primary goals is to own my own company. But when I think about owning my own company, I am not considering the process of actually performing the service, thinking about whether I will enjoy it, how much paperwork there will be, taxes, and all the other administrative stuff. I’m thinking semi-abstractly of a man in professional but laid back clothes smiling and working…

And that’s it. There aren’t a lot more details. What am I working on? Why do I exhude an air of excitement, happiness, and satisfaction? What is up with that pale blue abstract wall color?

The point is that we think in terms of metaphors. Stories for our lives that describe how we want to live. Of course, the reality of the situation is that there is a lot of time in any part of life where we aren’t filled to the brim with excitement.

Do you imagine falling in love as a couple outside laughing while the sun shines on them, the grass green, an antique stone wall running in the background while a stream gurgles cheerfully nearby?

Do you think of martial arts and sports in terms of flying through the air, or running really fast, perhaps using footwork or other methods to beat your opponents and succeed?

These are stories that I think of when I think of those things, but none of the stories much resembles my experience with martial arts or relationships. These are metaphors that I’m using to describe events and emotions.

Why We Like Metaphors

Metaphors are so much better than facts because they engage our whole brain. When we are involved in a story our sense of smell and taste and touch activate. Our heartbeat responds to excitement. It’s ever so much more fun than if we were to cycle through our supposition of a given job imagining the grueling minute details of showing up, logging on, checking email, responding to coworkers questions, resolving disputes, ad nauseum.

Thinking in metaphors is good because it gets us involved and excited. Without them we might never do anything. But they are dangerous also, because they can lead us to associate stories we like with decisions that we don’t like.

Fun With Storytelling

It can be a lot of fun, and a worthwhile exercise, to play around with your metaphors. When you think about your life goals, what kinds of stories to you engage? I like this because it’s just plain fun to sit down and imagine what your life will be like 5, 10, 15 years from now. Once you have several stories in mind, you can start to evaluate them in terms of how you can make that story as close to reality as possible.

A lot of our actions seem oriented toward achieving a story that we’ve committed ourselves to at some point. Sometimes we don’t realize that we don’t want that story anylonger. Sitting back and creating a bunch of new stories for your life gives you a chance to experiment and to realign your less conscious actions with a future that you still believe in.

-zot

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Decision making is hard enough given our tendency to avoid and circumvent reason, but making decisions in the face of advertising is that much more difficult. There is a great post at Get Rich Slowly about the insidious effect of marketing on how we think things taste. It’s really an excerpt from Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell, who always writes interesting things. It got me thinking about small simple things that people can do to emphasize their decision making skills and put a little resistance between the marketing machine and our subconscious minds. I developed an exercise that I think could help.

The goal of the exercise is to make us explicitly aware of the factors that affect our decision to buy things. I understand the things that influence my decisions best in terms of metaphors, so if I can identify the stories and images that I use to create my self identity, maybe I can at least recognize when an ad is appealing to those stories, and reduce their effect on my decisions.

List the big ticket items

Start off by listing the big things you’ve decided to buy in the last few years. Here’s mine:

• 1999 Toyota Corolla
• HP Laptop
• Ipod nano / Ipod shuffle
• Custom late 1990’s Italian road bike
• Futon
• Xbox with Xbox Live
• Two new suits from Mens Wearhouse
• Motorola E815 cell phone
• Trip to Canyonlands National Park
• Aikido equipment and dues

Examine the metaphors

Go through each item and write down the words you associate with it. What do you think of a person who owns that item? Try to think in terms of descriptive story-like terms:

1999 Toyota Corolla

To me, Toyota is an extremely well designed and well built brand, but without the expensive frills that are associated with more expensive cars. At the same time, Toyota is on the forefront of the hybrid movement. Corollas are cars for sensible, intelligent people who care about issues, but aren’t extravagant.

HP Laptop

HP is a stylish computer for the professional or serious student. Not the Wal-Mart of computers that is Dell, but not the super trendy mac (though in truth, I probably would have bought a mac if I had the money). I associate HP with business, capability, and the pc alternative to the mac. Again, a sensible and financially responsible choice. I got this, though it isn’t really available anymore: HP Pavilion.

Ipod Nano and Ipod Shuffle

The Apple Ipod Nano is owned by either young hipsters, older people wishing they were young, or young adult mobile professionals on the go but involved in the exciting world of new technology and business startups. The Apple iPod Shuffle is for athletes, especially runners, but also bicyclists and anyone doing conditioning. I also need them to listen to music :).

Custom Italian Road Bike

I didn’t buy this, it was given to me by a friend, but I really like it, so I thought I should include it. People who bike to work are, as with my earlier options, young and mobile, but also concerned about the environment and perhaps actively spurn US consumerism.

Futon

Now that I live with my girlfriend, I don’t use this for a bed, but I think of people who sleep on futons as introspective and meditative, with a desire to keep things as simple as possible. As with the Toyota Corolla, people who own futons try to keep frills to a minimum.

Xbox with Xbox Live

I’m pretty sure that the only people still playing Xbox Live (link is to the 360 version, the regular version is very hard to find these days) are little kids and frat boys. I am neither of these things, but I still play Halo occasionally, especially when we have teenaged family visiting. I associate Xbox with the pretty typical video game loving computer dork image, which I guess sort of fits me, even if I don’t like it (but lets admit it, I do).

Two new suits from Men’s Wearhouse

These are awesome suits! I still am not sure if they were worth the money, but they represented a conscious decision to move into a more professional world. My job is pretty casual, but it has it’s share of meetings with clients, and I wanted to be well dressed for those occasions. I’d say the style of the suits once again represents the young business professional, but with a hint of rebellion against the norm.

Motorola E815 cell phone

This phone is a piece of crap. I got it for free in a promotional deal from Amazon.com. At the time I was excited about the bluetooth headset capability, though the things are so ubiquitous now that I don’t want one, which says something about me in and of itself I think.

Trip to Canyonlands National Park

This was a rugged, hard core trip. This is the most recent one, but the trend in trips I’ve taken over the last few years has been ruggedness and things that remind me of the great value of getting away from technology. I associate these sorts of trips with active people who are doing things and going places, and work and play hard.

Aikido Equipment and Dues

Though I currently don’t practice, I still have all of my equipment, and I’ve paid years of dues. Aikido for me was the personal and philosophical side of my life. I tend to think of Aikido students as serious and introspective, respectful people who are dedicated to the pursuit of self-improvement.

Bringing it all together

Bring it all together by going through each item and noting the kinds of words you used. If you want, you can actually count each time you used a word and make a list. These are the things that advertisers are targeting when they make an ad for your demographic. You could probably sell this exercise to a marketer for a fair amount of money. Anyway, here’s my list:

• Sensible
• Intelligent
• Young and Mobile
• Professional
• Serious
• Introspective
• Hard Core
• Geeky
• Conscientious, environmentally and otherwise
• Different
• Quality over quantity

I added ‘quality over quantity’ because I think it sums up the well-made no frills statements that I made. I added ‘different’ because the suits are really rebellious, but aimed to be different than the typical black or blue pinstripe, while still being professional and attractive.

I think that gives marketers a pretty good series of images and stories to use if they want to grab my attention. It also gives me metaphors I can use to examine why I find something attractive.

Often when we make decisions about purchases we aren’t explicitly considering much of anything, but maybe keying in to the metaphors at work on our subconscious can help use to evaluate what we really want.

This exercise can be a little hard, because you may realize, as I did, that you don’t like some parts of the image that you typically associate with. In my case, I like all the parts individually, but together it seems like they add up to a perfect stereotype, which means I’m not really that different at all. It’s a good lesson.

Have fun with it. I’d love to hear what kind of results you come up with using this method, and whether you think there are ways it could be improved.

In Want Versus Should, I discuss some relevant implications of research on consumption based on short-term and long-term decisions.

-zot

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In What am I doing with my life?, I went over a fairly simple method called Pros-Cons-Fix that you can use to make decisions between several different options. I generally like that method, but sometimes I think it leaves something important out: values.

Often times when we are choosing between several different options, whether it is about what kind of car to buy or clothes to wear or what career to pursue, we aren’t making a decision based on the options themselves, but on the image and emotions that each option gives us.

emotions and images are so strong because a lot of our thinking is associative in nature. This can lead to problems like making incorrect associations, but also lets us evaluate complex decisions quickly.

When making long term decisions, I find it helpful to explicitly acknowledge the values that we use to pick something. It’s a simple exercise to sit down with each option and list the emotions and values that come to mind. This, in combination with your primary goals, can help you to see which decision is the right one.

Here are the four options I am considering and the values I associate with each one:

• Education: intensity, learning, executive, geek, studying
• Peace Corps: adventure, change, laughing, doing good work, social responsibility
• Ycombinator: high pressure, high stakes, extreme learning, amazing experience, all or nothing, high roller
• Status Quo: mundane, safe, relaxed

The first thing I noticed after doing this is that it was much easier for me to come up with words for the Peace Corps and the Ycombinator options, which are the more exciting options. The other two were more difficult. I think this points to how easy it is for us to imagine things when we are excited or invested in them. From this exercise alone I can tell that I’m not really interested in Education or the Status Quo.

The second thing I noticed is that out of six phrases for Ycombinator, three of them started with the word “high”. I think this illustrates how much of a gamble I consider this option to be. Either way I expect it to be a great experience, but I in my head I imagine a hard core gambler working around the clock to try and make a fortune. It reminds me of a day trader.

This exercise is really useful, and fleshes out the Pros-Cons-Fix method used earlier. It’s also a more intuitive and comfortable decision making technique. It doesn’t surprise me that I am more at home making a choice based on what I listed above than on the results of the Pros-Cons-Fix method. It is easier for us to make decisions based on feelings than based on reasoning.

I’m not saying that the results of one are any better or worse than the other. It’s important to consider both the emotional/imaginative aspects and the reasoning/logical aspects of big decisions like this.

-zot

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