Speaker 1: Today's episode is another my favorite tip episode where I
Speaker 1: go back to interviews from the past and I dig
Speaker 1: out the thing that was my favorite tip, like the
Speaker 1: thing that I got out of the interview that really
Speaker 1: impacted or resonated with me. This extract is from my
Speaker 1: chat with Professor Scott Sannenshein. Scott is a New York
Speaker 1: Times bestselling author and professor of management at Rice University.
Speaker 1: I came across Scott's work a few months ago now
Speaker 1: when I read his second book, Joy at Work. Scott
Speaker 1: wrote Joy at Work with best selling author and Netflix
Speaker 1: star Murray Kondo, who's cleaning methods I have used in
Speaker 1: my own home over the years and maybe you have too.
Speaker 1: In Joy at Work, Scott and Marie offers story studies
Speaker 1: and strategies to help you eliminate clutter and make space
Speaker 1: for work that really Matt. Now, I pulled two extracts
Speaker 1: out of my chat with Scott. There was just so
Speaker 1: much great stuff in the full interview and in this
Speaker 1: my favorite tip episode, we look at decision making. So
Speaker 1: in this chat, Scott offers a bunch of strategies to
Speaker 1: help you make significantly better decisions. So let's head on
Speaker 1: over to Scott.
Speaker 2: So there's lots of different estimates about the number of
Speaker 2: decisions that we make, and I, quite frankly, I can't
Speaker 2: count all of the decisions that I make, and that's
Speaker 2: part of the problem that we have is just a
Speaker 2: sense of decision overloads. So what I like to recommend
Speaker 2: to people is we've got to go through a sorting
Speaker 2: process first, because there are just thousands of decisions that
Speaker 2: most people are going to make on a daily basis,
Speaker 2: even though studies show we really only remember about one
Speaker 2: hundred of them, so we're not even conscious of a
Speaker 2: lot of decisions that we make. So I like to
Speaker 2: I like to segment decisions into, you know, different levels
Speaker 2: of important. So you've got smaller, low stakes decisions, medium
Speaker 2: steaks decisions, and high stakes decisions. And I like to
Speaker 2: separate and say for the small decisions, these are the
Speaker 2: ones that you either want to just get them done
Speaker 2: and not think much about them. So you know, this
Speaker 2: is going to vary by the type of job that
Speaker 2: you have naturally, but for me, for example, the type
Speaker 2: of copy paper or printer paper I have, or the
Speaker 2: type of font I use in a paper, or the
Speaker 2: type of font I use in the PowerPoint presentation. Those
Speaker 2: are small stakes decisions for me. They are not going
Speaker 2: to have a material impact on the quality or effectiveness
Speaker 2: of my work, so I don't think about them. I just,
Speaker 2: you know, default to what I always do. So I'm
Speaker 2: always going to write, for example, in New Times Roman
Speaker 2: when I'm doing a word duff. Those are small decisions.
Speaker 2: In other types of context, you might want to automate
Speaker 2: those decisions, so you know, even on a personal level,
Speaker 2: a lot of my monthly purchases of supplies for the
Speaker 2: house come through automatic subscription services, so I don't have
Speaker 2: to think about what I need every month. It just
Speaker 2: shows up at my door every month, so I don't
Speaker 2: have to be burthened with an extra set of decisions.
Speaker 2: Do I want to buy this? Do I not want
Speaker 2: to buy that? It just happens automatically. So I think
Speaker 2: the first part is to just cut down because a
Speaker 2: majority of our decisions fall into those low stakes decisions,
Speaker 2: so let's automate them, let's not think about them. In
Speaker 2: some cases, we might also delegate them to those who
Speaker 2: might derive more meaning or more satisfaction, or it's more
Speaker 2: important for the type of job they have. Let them
Speaker 2: make those decisions. Then you can focus on the more
Speaker 2: important ones, the medium stakes and the high stakes decisions,
Speaker 2: and you can dedicate your limited energy on trying to
Speaker 2: make better decisions in those areas. So that's the first
Speaker 2: step is really the try and offload the small decisions,
Speaker 2: focus on the medium and the large stakes decisions. The
Speaker 2: next step is to then think about how are you
Speaker 2: going to structure those decisions. And we have an intuition
Speaker 2: that you give me more choices, I'm going to have
Speaker 2: a better set of results. But there's actually a rich
Speaker 2: body in the psychology literature about how choice can be
Speaker 2: really overwhelming and can do some disruptive things to us.
Speaker 2: So one, it takes more time to process through the choices,
Speaker 2: but two, we tend to be less satisfied when we
Speaker 2: have a lot of choices because we think about, well,
Speaker 2: I picked, I made this decision, but I could have
Speaker 2: went the other way, and maybe I have some regrets
Speaker 2: and I have decision decision regret. Maybe I didn't make
Speaker 2: the best choice, and you start second guessing yourself. So
Speaker 2: another part of my decision making process is to try
Speaker 2: and whittle down choices. So if someone comes to me
Speaker 2: and says, hey, I want your your insight, and I
Speaker 2: want you to make a decision about you know, whether
Speaker 2: or not you know where we should For example, you
Speaker 2: know this have this class, what type of what type
Speaker 2: of room do we want? And I'm going to always say,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't want five or more room choices.
Speaker 2: Kind of give me what you think are the three
Speaker 2: best choices for the class, and then I'll make a
Speaker 2: decision from a more limited choice set.
Speaker 1: So almost getting someone else to do the work for
Speaker 1: you in part to get to that short list.
Speaker 2: Well, you're having someone kind of whittle down the list,
Speaker 2: so then you can focus on making the best choice
Speaker 2: among a sec a subsection of that list.
Speaker 1: And what other strategies do you use I guess with
Speaker 1: those more important decisions that are more high stakes to
Speaker 1: make sure that you're making a good decision, like I know,
Speaker 1: you know, certainly in psychic literature and I guess cognitive
Speaker 1: psychic literature, there's been what's written about things like decision
Speaker 1: fatigue and the benefits of activating the unconscious mind when
Speaker 1: making decisions. What are some of the research findings that
Speaker 1: you tend to apply for when you are making those
Speaker 1: high stakes decisions.
Speaker 2: Well, certainly the unconscious mind helps a lot because we
Speaker 2: do so much thinking outside of our deliberate thoughts, and
Speaker 2: in many respects we're more creative. So when I'm facing
Speaker 2: kind of a decision that involves creativity, so it could
Speaker 2: be around writing something, or how to present something, or
Speaker 2: thinking of a research question, I like to take a
Speaker 2: walk and I like to actually, counterintuitively not think about
Speaker 2: the decision that I'm making. And this is hard for
Speaker 2: people to grasp because they're like, well, you're not working,
Speaker 2: then how are you actually going to make the decision?
Speaker 2: And what people need to realize is that the brain
Speaker 2: is still activated even when you're not thinking about something,
Speaker 2: and what the research teaches are is that by doing
Speaker 2: something that takes kind of a low level of cognitive activity,
Speaker 2: that actually activates the brain to be thinking about more
Speaker 2: important things separately. And I'll often find that at the
Speaker 2: end of the walk, I have some type of epiphany
Speaker 2: and I solve my problem, and it's almost like the
Speaker 2: best of both worlds because I feel like I kind
Speaker 2: of have a semblance of what to do, but I
Speaker 2: also feel like I wasn't actually working. So I think
Speaker 2: that's an important part is certainly the subconscious aspect of it.
Speaker 2: I think another thing that would really help too is
Speaker 2: to recognize that, like you know, as an academic, so
Speaker 2: much of our work is like that last twenty percent,
Speaker 2: and it's like, how do you get this thing exactly perfect?
Speaker 2: And you know, maybe when you're trying to submit a
Speaker 2: research paper or you're writing a book, you really want
Speaker 2: it to be perfect. But most of the decisions that
Speaker 2: I make, and most of the decisions that most people make,
Speaker 2: don't require that type of perfection. And I think if
Speaker 2: we relax our standards and we say okay for this decision,
Speaker 2: even though it's important, is good enough going to be
Speaker 2: good enough? Do we need to get to that perfection?
Speaker 2: And is it worth the incremental effort to get that
Speaker 2: extra ten percent out of it? And in most cases
Speaker 2: I would say it's probably not. So I think there's
Speaker 2: an importance of recognizing that in many cases good enough
Speaker 2: or in kind of the decision making world we talked
Speaker 2: about satisfying, that's a viable approach for making these decisions,
Speaker 2: because otherwise we're just going to burn out from all
Speaker 2: of these decisions, and later decisions that we have to
Speaker 2: make aren't going to be as effective because we've just
Speaker 2: run ourselves into the ground.
Speaker 1: That is it for today's show. If you want to
Speaker 1: listen to the full episode, I link to that in
Speaker 1: the show notes, so you might want to check that out.
Speaker 1: And if you are enjoying how I work, I would
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Speaker 1: it for today's show and I will see you next time.