June 12 – Cultivate Decisiveness: From Circumstances to Choice

“Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson after.” Vernon Law

The world today can seem overwhelming with all of the choices we have. When we were younger, before smart phones and the internet, decisions were simpler and there were fewer of them. We drove home the way we knew to go, if there was a traffic jam, we were not alerted and redirected, we just sat in traffic. Now we are making so many little decisions every day, that we get overloaded. In her book, How to Break Up With Your Phone, Catherine Price describes “every time we encounter a link, our brains must make a split-second decision about whether to click on it. These decisions are so frequent and tiny that we often don’t even notice that they are happening. But we can’t make split-second decisions and think deeply at the same time – the two acts use different and competing brain regions. Every decision, no matter how tiny or subconscious, pulls our attention away from what we are reading. This in turn makes it harder to think about it critically or remember it later.”

As a teacher, I found myself suffering from teacher decision fatigue. According to findings from Philip W. Jackson, elementary teachers have between 200 and 300 interactions with students every hour, which equals about 1200-1500 exchanges per day. Most of these cannot be anticipated ahead of time, resulting in extreme teacher decision fatigue. As I gained experience as a teacher, I found myself making these decisions more automatically. When overwhelmed with decisions, people tend to use shortcuts in decision-making. These can often lead to biases. In What to Expect When You’re Expecting Robots, Julie Shah and Laurie Major say, “poor human decision-making due to these kinds of biases has been documented across many applications, including economics, marketing, fantasy sports, and firefighting.” They go on to explain “situational awareness is a theoretical construct that helps us understand how people process information, understand complex situations, and develop the ability to make decisions.”

“The older we get, the longer we live, the more we realize that we are born looking like our parents, but we die looking like our decisions.” T.D. Jakes

So how can we make better decisions? Russ Roberts explains in his book, Wild Problems, that optionality is one way. “Optionality is when you have the freedom to do something, but not the obligation. The essence of optionality is appreciating that you can’t know in advance what will work.” This is what I use when it comes to buying shoes. Looking at reviews and trying them on in the store often doesn’t give me a full picture of what works for me long term. I’d rather buy shoes, with the option of wearing them for a few days around the house and being able to return or exchange them for free if they are uncomfortable.

Roberts suggests that we use this idea for life. “Try to have more experiences than fewer.” Often going exploring can turn out much better than a planned itinerary.

This idea makes me think of a trip my husband, son, and I took to the Grand Canyon. We decided to take a week off in December to drive from New Jersey to Arizona and back. I had it mapped out and planned to stop every 8 hours or so to sleep for the night. I had planned a few stops along the way, like looking for my grandmother’s grave in West Virginia, but other than that, I encouraged my family to look at this as an adventure. Everything was going well. When we crossed time zones, we got an hour back, so we would drive 8 hours, but it only felt like 7. We saw signs on the highway and took the time to stop and see the world’s biggest pencil and mail a postcard from the world’s biggest mailbox. The government was shut down due to a budget issue, so when we got to the Gateway Arch and Petrified Forest National Park, they were both closed. It was disappointing, but we still had a really good time. We were in awe of the Grand Canyon, the scenery, wildlife, and people. It was a wonderful trip, until our last day in Arizona. We woke up to a few inches of snow the morning we were heading back east. As we drove in Arizona, we noticed they hadn’t salted the roads in Arizona and people were driving like maniacs.

Someone would pass us going 100 miles an hour, then a few miles down the road, we would see that car flipped over in the median. It was a stressful situation. To add to this stress, since we were traveling in the opposite direction, every time we crossed a time zone, we lost an hour! We were going to stop at Meteor Crater, but we decided we didn’t have time with the snow and time zones. Everything came to a standstill in New Mexico. We waited and waited for hours in barely moving traffic. We could not decide whether to get off or stay on the highway. If we got off, what route would we take? If we stayed on, how would we get to the next hotel or eat dinner? In the end, our bladders made the decision for us. We got off and went to the bathroom, got food for dinner, and tried to find a local hotel. They were all booked with all of the people who had decided sooner to get off the highway. Little did we know they had shut down the highway. That traffic would not have moved all night. We decided to try to navigate ourselves on little back roads through New Mexico and into Texas to our next hotel in Amarillo. This leg of the trip was very memorable, and we still laugh about it to this day. I saw surprised jack rabbits running across the snowy road. We drove past Billy the Kid’s burial site. There is one story I can only tell certain people about my son and a train. We got to see places that we would have skipped past on the highway. It was a true adventure and it all happened because of the decisions we had to make. If everything had gone as planned, we would have missed so much, and it would have been a flatter experience.

“The most difficult decision is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” Amelia Earhart

Roberts tells us, “As we get older, we understand that the pain we have endured, especially heartbreak, hasn’t just made us stronger. It has made everything we experience richer and fuller.” I would give anything to have my mom back. When she passed away, I dove into a deep depression. I had to claw my way out of it. This made me appreciate my relationships with everyone in my life much more. You never know when the last time you see or speak to someone will be. It made me mindfully make the decisions to go out with friends, give my son a hug, or say I love you every night to my husband. It was painful, but it gave my life depth and intensity.

So, what tools can we use to make these decisions? Data? Our gut instinct? Surely not our bladders!

Tomorrow, we will explore ways to make the “tame” and “wild” problems simpler to solve.

Activity –

"Opt-in" Experiment: Challenge yourself to say "yes" more often to unexpected invitations or opportunities. Reflect on how this openness to new experiences can lead to positive outcomes.

In today's increasingly digital world, it's easy to lose sight of what makes us human. The constant bombardment of screens and social media can distract us from cultivating essential qualities like kindness, empathy, and resilience.

My book, Nurturing Hopeful Resilience,  guides parents and caregivers through the challenges of raising children in a technology-driven age. It explores the importance of instilling strong values in children from a young age to help them develop into compassionate, responsible, and fulfilled individuals.

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This book offers a roadmap for raising children who are academically successful, emotionally intelligent, socially adept, and morally grounded. It encourages readers to prioritize human connection, empathy, and compassion over material possessions and fleeting digital distractions. By embracing the power of values, we can create a brighter future for ourselves and generations to come.