How to make good decisions?

A significant and intense chunk of our lives  may be spent pondering ‘hard choices.’ Should

we continue in our relationship with X or part  from them to see who else we might find? But

what if we land on no one better? Yet what if  we stay and the relationship never improves?

Should we buy this property that’s beautiful  but worryingly close to the railway tracks?

Or should we buy the other one that has  less charm but might be quieter? Should

we accept this job that has prestige and the  possibility of a stellar future? Or should

we stay where we are because we love our  colleagues and have a high quality of life?

Part of the agony of choosing at  such moments is that we are in the

background consumed by the idea that  the ‘wrong choice’ may prove appalling

in the extreme and the right choice  a route to exceptional fulfilment.

But we are perhaps suffering unnecessarily and  might find reassurance in the strategic use of

two kinds of thinking, alternately optimistic  and pessimistic in tone. To trial the former,

we might propose that part of the reason why  certain choices feel so hard is that all options

on the table have - in truth - something to  offer us. The choice is only ‘hard’ because

we are having to pick between substantially  decent alternatives. We cannot choose because

the choices before us are all pretty good. If we  stayed with X, there would be much to celebrate.

And if we went off and found someone else,  they would have many charms too. As for the

two homes we are judging between, both are  really very pleasant in different ways. And

the same holds true for our jobs. Whichever option  we choose, we will have much to be pleased about.

There is equal comfort to be found by running  the argument in a pessimistic direction. We are

obsessed by the idea that a wise choice will help  to prevent a nightmare, but considered soberly,

there will be something pretty difficult about  every route we take. We are finding it hard to

choose because all options have their unavoidably  disappointing dimensions. X partner can certainly

be annoying; but so will Y partner. Pretty  much anyone we end up with is going to have

their dispiriting sides. There is no dodging the  inherent difficulty of everyone. As for property,

no house can ever make life perfect. A lot  of unhappiness will be ours wherever we

happen to sleep. No house can spare us certain  fundamental agonies of existence. Similarly,

the dissatisfactions we know in our present  job will have equivalents whatever job we

pick. In other words, everything is  certain to be a bit awful - a truth

we are vainly striving to deny in our  furious search for the ‘right choice’.

What powers the pain of choice is to a large  extent an illusion: the idea of a single solution

that can either conclusively deliver happiness or  skirt unhappiness. We are exaggerating our agency.

Once we recognise that by the time we are spending  hours on a choice, anything we choose will be

both pretty fine and simultaneously stubbornly  somewhat awful too, we may cease to grow either

quite so exercised or so terrified. We can afford  to rest more easily. We are never far from pain;

and we are never far from joy. We might  let a roll of the dice decide the rest.