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Some years back, I observed that a surprising number of decisions are based on emotions more than logic.
Which is unusual for me, as I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty left-brained guy.
The truth is that humans are remarkably driven by stuff we think of as “illogical”. But emotions aren’t opposed to rational thinking – in fact they are what have helped the human race survive for millennia in a challenging world. We just don’t like to admit it.
Read the rest of this entry »By its very definition, when you focus on something you become blind to other things.
Your brain has limited bandwidth, limited attention. If you’re paying attention to one thing, you’re removing attention from something else. That’s just the way it works.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if you’re doing it intentionally. To practice an instrument well, it really helps to be able to “shut out the rest of the world” for a while.
Read the rest of this entry »I’ve found that things work better when I take a pause for important decisions.
Typically this looks like waiting until the next morning, but when I started my coaching business with Small Fish that was a week-long pause. During that time I investigated a few things, but the important part was to let my logical mind sync up with my emotional mind.
Same thing for deciding to propose a job in Australia – that was actually multiple weeks because of how deeply it affected the rest of my family.
Read the rest of this entry »You’d like to think that values-based decisions are easy.
In some ways they might be, I suppose, but they can also be incredibly difficult. Especially when you run up against the norms of society or your industry.
One of my personal management philosophies has been to be supportive of the time it takes for people to learn something new. This got me into trouble when I refused to fire a problematic employee that others were impatient with.
Read the rest of this entry »When you’re at a point of making a decision, there’s usually a “good” direction and “bad” direction. But we usually pick the third option … doing nothing.
Now that doesn’t mean we need to rush things too much, which can result in a bad choice. But in our current environment, we’re overloaded with data and tradeoffs and options, which can put your lizard brain into freezing up.
That itself is a choice, even though it doesn’t feel like it.
Read the rest of this entry »There are times when we have to explore the possible futures.
Like it or not, we have to ponder both the good and the bad. Today I’ll look at the downside, and next week at the upside.
Some folks are naturally pessimistic. I’ve tried to focus on optimism, but there are times I have to try to balance – especially when making big decisions.
Read the rest of this entry »Humans don’t live in the present very well. We’re always looking forward, anticipating.
It’s usually a good thing, but there’s times we can get into trouble.
As a leader, part of your job is to make some tough decisions. Things which will sting for you and those around you.
Read the rest of this entry »We’ve all been there, the greatest embarrassments of our careers.
The hard part is being really honest with yourself, as you probably saw the failure coming and just hoped that you’d be able to find your away around it.
Jim Collins articulated this idea well in Good to Great:
Read the rest of this entry »The word “should” is a great alarm bell for drawing attention to the decision-making process.
I should get this done for my boss. I should take more time with my kids. I should drink 8 cups of water every day.
The problem is that each describes a situation where you’re giving up control over your decisions to an external force, usually a person. The question is: do you want to give up that control? Do you choose to?
Read the rest of this entry »This time of year, it’s common to think about giving. The holiday season seems to be designed to tap our guilt and elicit generosity.
Which is fine, I suppose. But if this attitude is just limited to a custom we do once a year, then it’s really not much more important than shooting fireworks on the 4th of July.
A nice experience, but then we move back to “normal life” – whatever that is.
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