"You can choose choices but not outcomes."

I've just finished reading The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. His main character Nora and I share at least one core anxiety - the fear that we're not making the right decision, and if we'd made a better decision, we'd get want we wanted. Nora is maybe in a slightly more tense situation, but she has the advantage - she gets to make the decision again if she gets it wrong. What are you supposed to do if you're just a normal non-fictional human and have to live with the consequences of your decisions?

What makes a good decision?

Decision making was a recent module in a management training I've been enjoying from HIT Scotland. We spent quite some time trying to define a 'good' decision, and the ideas came from a whole spectrum of places. Was the decision based on sound logic? Was it rooted in experience and information, or pure instinct? Did it take into account other people's perspectives? Was it made in a calm, thoughtful way or in response to stress?

All of these factors have something in common - they have nothing to do with the outcome of the decision. Sure, there's a reason why we're making a decision - to achieve a certain outcome or goal. But making the decision in no way guarantees what will happen. Once we've sent our tiny decisive plan into the world, we have no control over what will happen to it. Our fundamental understanding of the problem could have been flawed; we could have missed a variable; we might find a completely freak circumstance that changes everything. The good news is that none of these outside chance change whether the decision we made was a good one.

You can choose choices but not outcomes

Nora gets the chance to undo certain decisions in her life and relive the outcomes in order to find a life she wants to live. Even though she tries several angles to solve this problem, she constantly runs into the issue of the outcomes of her decision being totally unexpected and out of her control. She eventually realises, "...you can choose choices but not outcomes". As she evolves over the course of the story, she learns that her decisions aren't made independent of everyone else - the things she decides for herself affect others, and for her the way she impacts other people's lives becomes even more vital to her happiness than the impact she has on her own situation. 

As an ordinary human without the ability to rewrite my life, I'm stuck trying to defend and ultimately feel good about every decision I make in my day. I've had a few decades worth of experience with this, but still I find myself doubting my ability to pick 'the right thing' when the time comes. What if my choice causes something unwanted or even harmful to happen to me or to someone else?

Choosing the right choice

The only way I've found to combat this fear is to consciously aim for three things;

1.  A firm foundation of information and evidence. I make sure I have all the information it's feasible for me to have - it's not feasible for me to know everything, and sometimes it's not possible for me to know much of anything at all. But you just have to work with what you've got. 

2.  Alignment with my values and the things I find important in life. If I make a decision that knowingly goes against what I believe in, I'll never feel good about it even if I get what I wanted out of it. 

3.  Inclusion of the perspectives of other people. And this means I'm not only listening to other people but I'm emotionally ready to hear them out. 

If I manage all three, I feel like I've done everything to ensure I don't look back with regret.

Obviously even when I meet this list of criteria, sometimes it goes wrong. But my comfort in these moments, when I look back and wonder 'What was I thinking?' - I know exactly what I was thinking. I know I was using the information available, that I was living my values and I was accepting other perspectives. I chose the right choice, even if I didn't get the outcome I was hoping for.