I experienced a reaffirmation of a cornerstone principle that I first recognized for myself, some many years ago.
I think that anyone who knows me, will tell you that I am
one of the most analytical people they know. I spend a lot of time thinking
things through and pride myself on my ability to come up with efficient
solutions to what are often multi-dimensional, complex problems. I credit this
ability more than any of my other personal traits, as the reason for my
professional success. Unfortunately, this problem-solving is not a thing that I
can voluntarily turn off and at times, it had been the cause of some sleepless
nights. Often it is like my form of meditation – I will go down the rabbit hole
of trying to figure out why something is the way it is, why something happened,
trying to re-analyze previous decisions, or set my mind on a personal problem,
or project. I think we all do this from time to time, right?
One of such problems was the focus of my musings on numerous occasions over the
past two years. The question itself is immaterial to this topic and I will not
share it. What is material is that in my mind – the question was always a
binary one: do a thing, or not do it.
Quite a few hours over multiple thought sessions had gone into
self-analysis and attempts to look at the pros and cons of doing the thing from
every angle. And despite all this evaluation, I had never come up with a fully justified
answer that I liked. The topic reared its head more recently and had been on my
mind over the past few days…
In Western society I feel that we grow up with the notion that our own thoughts and conclusions are the foremost answer to any problem. What to have for lunch? Which car to buy? Which event to attend? Who to vote for? Westerners hold fast to their college degrees, religious beliefs and personal experiences, which make up the core of their problem-solving apparatuses – we put a lot of weight into “self”. People only ask their friends for advice in a near rhetorical fashion and often after crossing the point of no return. They mostly expect to hear the echo chamber of supportive friends who will reaffirm the correctness of their decision. Questioning a friend’s decision or providing a counter-view is seen as borderline anti-social. Appearances of encouragement are seen as friendship, whereas criticisms and unsolicited advice are seen as being rude. Having many acquaintance-friends who are fun to spend time with, might be useful for professional networking and career advancement, is clearly more valuable in our society than having fewer really close friends. Being supportive and agreeable, even if that agreement is superficial or dishonest, is deemed better than being honestly critical.
Simultaneously, I have seen it written in academic works on psychiatry, and have made the observation myself, that we as humans often fail miserably at decision-making, when attempting to do it alone. The reason is that our decisions are really broken up into smaller inter-connected blocks that are built like a jenga tower: every decision “block” is solved and set in place with next bit of the decision being in another block that is entirely set up on the preceding blocks beneath. A decision to buy a car, might have dozens of these blocks strung together. Do I need a car? Should it be an SUV? By when must I have it? Can I afford it? Does it fit into my parking spot? Which color is best? Should I get the heated seats? Etc. When we answer each of these blocks, we are mentally “done” with them and assume that whatever we came up with is the absolute best decision that can be made and we focus our minds to mull over on the next block that will be set on that one. And certain blocks that seem like a no-brainer are unwittingly set down too quickly, leading to the next blocks – the ones that carry the essence of our more difficult decisions – to grow in an erroneous direction. Did you really *need* that car? I have observed this numerous times in friends and acquaintances, read about it in a maritime incident investigation, and have unfortunately observed it in myself. Periodically, you see people do things and justify things to themselves that are downright batshit crazy! But when you look into how they got to their final solution, you often find that it was not their last crazy decision that was faulty – the error was made early on in their train of thought and nearly always on some seemingly benign little fact.
About two years ago I listened to a piece on NPR that talked about the conclusion of a large-scale study that aimed to identify the recipe to lifetime success. They looked primarily at and graded achievement, NOT wealth. And alongside with asking all kinds of questions from successful professionals and business owners, a few interesting things came up that I found fascinating! But one that gave my spine a tingle, was the conclusion that lifetime success was closely linked to having critical friends!! Time and time again, high achieving individuals answering questions about their personal friendships and connections, disclosed that they had at least one close friend who was the ‘black sheep’ of the group. This was the asshole who spoke their mind bluntly and honestly. When questioned further about this by researchers, every single subject was able to recall times when their critical friend gave them feedback which was unpleasant at first, but then changed their perspective in a beneficial way. In my life, I struggle to find such a friend. While simultaneously discovering that my tendency to give blunt (and often unsolicited) advice, sometimes causes me to lose acquaintance of people whose company I enjoy. These have been things that I have been personally working on.
Back to my binary question: whether a thing should be done, or not done. Over a casual drink with a friend the other day, I had conversationally shared my problem and voiced that I am leaning towards doing the thing despite some misgivings that I had along the way. I had spent hours tossing this around in my brain and it felt like one of those shape puzzles – will these pretzel shapes come apart, or not? But the response that I got was not the cuddling and supportive affirmation of my decision. It smacked me like a glass of ice water on a tanning bed not because of the conclusion, but due to the sudden realization that my friend’s off the cuff solution, was better than mine! The proposed solution was that I was wrong with my decision and that the answer was not binary at all! “You should do something similar to fulfil the end goal and do so in a completely different way.”
Shortly after we parted, I had about 3 hours atop of my bike riding and taking a ferry to Orcas Island where most of my thoughts were centered around this incident. How did I not see the solution and how was it so simple? The reason is – that damned jenga block! From the first time that I’d thought about my problem, I had decided that the solution must be either to do the thing, or to not do it – those, I concluded, were my only two options. I marked this block as ‘solved’ and then focused my mind’s power on evaluating the next block, not realizing that my error in judgement was already made. The third option of reaching the same goal by doing a similar thing differently, was not even something that I’d considered.
The power of a true and honest 2nd person perspective in our decision-making process, is invaluable! We as humans, no matter how smart, simply suck at making multi-block decisions, because we see the jenga tower from only one dimension. It is incredibly difficult to step back and reevaluate your own conclusions. It’s like body odor – it’s damned near impossible to detect your own when other people can smell it from across the street! This is not the first time that I’ve stumbled into something like this. And it will not be the last. But life has a tendency to give us reminders like this and it is wise to take a minute and soak them in. And in this case, I am grateful that my friend went out on a limb and shared her true thoughts on the matter. I need more friends like this in my life!
– The 206’er. 2019-08-16