We consider big life decisions to be important life decisions. Well, that’s why we call them big. They have a significant impact on our lives and could change our lives big time. What is big of course depends on our stage in life. Choosing a college might seem high stakes in your youth while deciding who to marry and if you want kids becomes important later. What they all have in common: we consider the stakes high and therefore fuss around making the perfect decision. However, there is one core difference between big life decisions and day-to-day decisions.
The challenge of big life decisions: lack of practice
Our life is a decision tree. We make decisions all the time. And, fortunately, most of them come easily. As we are put in front of similar situations regularly, such as picking something to wear in the morning or deciding what to have for lunch, we continuously learn what works and what doesn’t. Our brain hardly has to make an effort anymore. With big life decisions we lack this significant element: we lack practice. The important situations we are confronted with usually don’t occur daily. While we might change jobs a few times or even don’t stick with the first “life partner” we chose to marry, the repetition, and therefore practice, is very limited. The result: we cannot learn from previous mistakes. We cannot optimise the decision as we go through life.
How to improve decisions with design thinking
So, is there a way to make a big life decision confidently? Predicting the future is not possible, I’ll be honest with you. But there is a way to make big decisions more confidently. We can learn from business & innovation practices. In business, the same dilemma exists. Making big decisions (usually involving lots of money & time) is a risky investment. What do they do? Leaders, founders, and decision-makers derisk. They try to minimize the risk of a decision by validating their assumptions before diving in head-first. Design thinking & idea validation is one widely used and proven method to do just that. It helps to identify your assumptions and systematically validates if they are true or not. While those insights might not give you 100% clarity, they certainly make it easier to choose between different paths. Ideally, the most certain outlook is the one you pursue.
Validating your assumptions to make confident decisions
Let’s talk action. How? How do you validate your assumptions to make confident decisions? And we’re back at (big) life decisions again. Let’s simplify the approach into three steps:
Be clear about your assumptions
What are all the things about yourself, your life, and the situation in question that you think to be true? It might be a certain self-image you are holding, a set of qualifications when it comes to your career. What do you believe to be true?
Understand your proof
Do you have any proof (other than your own belief) that this is true? For example, you strongly believe you will never be able to work in design because you have no degree, experience, or passion. But you also never talked about this with anyone, why would you? It seems pointless. That belief is based solely on your perspective. In our example, there is not much proof.
Research and find your proof
To make your belief more objective, you will need to do “research” and gather more proof that without a degree and experience, you have no chance to become a designer. So, you’ll have to go on a discovery. You can talk to other designers and their career paths, you can research job requirements. Be creative in this step. It’s about collecting as much data (from existing data and by simply talking to people!). Only when you have more proof available can you consider your belief in the decision-making process. Without more proof, you will fail to make a decision speaking to your full potential.
We can’t know for sure what life has in store for us no matter how often we re-think a decision. We can’t make the perfect decision because we don’t know all the factors influencing it. We simply can’t imagine the complexity of a big life decision. What we can do is to be certain about the assumptions we bring into the decision-making process. We want to make sure that the beliefs we hold about ourselves and our lives are not (too) biased by our self-image or previous (difficult) experiences.
Take just five minutes now and think about the beliefs you hold about yourself and how they impact your big decisions. Are you aware of them? Do you know those, maybe limiting, beliefs exist? Go on a little discovery and find out. If you need help along the way, let’s chat.