Intelligent Decision-Making Isn't What We Think It Is

Feeling good about your life isn’t out of reach.

This blog post is now a podcast episode!

A problem I ran into when I was trying to figure out how to make my life one I was enthused to live was that I didn’t know what that actually felt like. I’d been denying my true desires for so long that I had no context for judging whether choices I made were good ones. What does “good choice” even mean? Maybe you’re familiar with this type of confusion, where you cease to be able to differentiate between decisions that are good or bad for you. It’s a common result of trying to convince ourselves that we actually want to do things we don’t. You may be thinking, “I never do that,” but if you are struggling to figure out what makes you happy, you probably do. Don’t feel bad about it. Our social conditioning is to sublimate ourselves to some extent to familial, work, and societal demands. But if life isn’t returning to you what you put into it, it may be time to take a closer look at your decision-making process.

The real challenge, you see, isn’t the things we know we don’t want to do. Sometimes we feel we have to do things we don’t want to, but if we are clear on the compromises we are making, we at least can make decisions for ourselves with full knowledge of that. The damage accrues from continuing to do things we don’t want to do and playing mind games in order to make that kind of life acceptable. Any time we tell ourselves “It’s not so bad,” or “This has a bright side,” or “Maybe things will change,” or the worst, “This is just what life is,” we are clouding our capacity to know what our personal good and bad are. We are teaching ourselves to ignore our signals. And this results in an eventual inability to make good decisions for ourselves.

There is a way to be more intelligent about choices, but it’s a counterintuitive process that contradicts what we usually think of as smart decision-making. Raise your hand if you think intelligent choices involve careful and thoughtful evaluation. *Waving my hand vigorously*. This is how I made decisions for years. With lists of pros and cons. By considering all angles. You know the drill. It seems obvious that this is the intelligent way to make important decisions. And it’s not a bad way to make decisions. Except we use it indiscriminately when it’s meant for a specific type of context and outcome.

When the results that matter to you are ones that can be measured and quantified, especially if outcome is the most important thing, this kind of decision-making works great. For example, I used this process before embarking on getting my PhD. I carefully and thoughtfully worked out my reasoning using indicators like my skill set and professional goals. I really covered my bases in terms of the forethought I put into the decision. Like, really. And lo and behold, I now have a PhD that qualifies me for several different career paths. Success! Good decision-making! Except, if you’ve read anything else on this blog, you know what actually happened. I got super burned out and stopped wanting to be alive. So…not good decision-making?

I thought it was a good decision. I thought it was what I wanted to do. I figured that if there were things I didn’t like about it along the way, it wouldn’t matter, because it was a good decision and would take me to good place in life. What I didn’t realize was that I was already so used to denying my true desires that I genuinely didn’t have a good understanding of what I wanted out of life. I was using the wrong type of decision-making process. I was thinking too much, being too “smart” about things. I don’t regret my decision to do a PhD, but I’ve certainly learned my lesson.

Intelligent decision-making isn’t about being smart. It’s about knowing what kind of decision-making process is appropriate for a specific context. An analytical, rational process may work well in situations where you have full information and can make reliable predictions about outcome. But it often won’t work very well in the personal and social realms. There are just too many complex variables, unpredictable factors, and unknowns. When it comes to making life decisions, all we can really know with authority is what something feels like to us now. We can know if something gives us a feeling of expansion and excitement inside, or if it causes us to tighten up and feel small and scared or we don’t feel as happy or excited as it seems we should. If it inspires us or fills us with a sense of dread. If we can’t wait to jump right in and experiment, or if the only thing we feel really enthusiastic about is an outcome. When the outcome appears to you in technicolor and surround sound while the steps to get there are murky, that’s something to pay attention to.

When I was trying to figure out what to do with my life after I finished my PhD, I decided that I would only do things I felt good doing. Not what I thought I wanted, not what I might want in the future, but what actually felt good to do right now. I’ve used that principle every step of the way, slowly building up my creative business from nothing. So if you’re wondering what someone with a PhD in international relations is doing running a creativity website – well, exactly. All this started from a kernel of nothing. None of it was planned or predictable. I simply decided to listen to how I felt about things. And when something felt good, I did that thing. This means that I’m genuinely enjoying the process of building my business, and as a result, my life feels fulfilling and meaningful. It’s a simple formula: do what feels good to you, and your life will feel good. It’s a night-and-day difference from my experience getting my PhD – which I’m sure looks like the greater accomplishment to the outside world. But you and I know that the real accomplishment is feeling good about life. For me, that has never been a given, and for a very long time I thought it was something that would forever be out of my reach.