How binary thinking leads to worse results

 

Have you ever wondered why we get stuck on the concept of making the right or wrong decision? 

Have you realized that thinking a decision either leads to the right path and that the other leads to the wrong one is binary? How limiting.

I appreciate the picture for this post is exactly that; it was by design to re-enforce what most people go through when making decisions. We get stuck trying to settle on whether or not we should do a particular thing. This simple lens, while easy to process and helps us feel in control, usually results in a failure to consider other alternatives.

Rarely are our choices black or white, yet we spend so much of our time trying to decide against one single thing. This is to to our detriment in two major ways. 

First, we are limiting our our choices. We don't consider alternatives that could be equally rewarding and adequate to solve the problem. Second, causes us to miss out on the experience of trying and testing alternatives, which could lead to new types of thinking when we are considering what it is that we want to do.

The more choices we consider, the more we will get exposed to the hidden factors that we don't often pay attention to when intently focused on a binary comparison. By working with multiple alternatives at the same time, we can combine elements from divergent trains of thought and come to a decision faster than when we work with a single choice.

The important thing is to be mindful to how many options you will bring into your model. Having a few more relevant alternatives to consider is helpful, adding dozens of options however will likely lead to a type of decision paralysis as a result of a choice overload.

By having multiple alternatives as part of the decision making process, you make it easier to disengage from your biases (yes you have them, we all do) and allow other people or other positions to challenge your default mode network. 

It is important to not try to predict or control the outcome / future. Humans are terrible at predicting the future, yet we base so much of our decisions what we expect the outcomes to be (p.s. the smarter you thinking you are, the more clever ... the higher the odds that your predictions will be wrong). 

We crave the psychological safety that comes from the certainty of knowing the outcome. 

The more that we allow control to play a role in our decision making process, the more likely it is that you will end up with a "solution" very similar to where you are now; true change, radical problem solving, comes from giving up on what you think you know. If you can get yourself to the point where you would be happy no matter how something turned out, that is where the most transformative decisions of your life will be.

This is freedom, learn to love it.