Thoughts for the Indecisive Among Us

Decision making is tough enough when you only have your own interests to keep in mind. Add in the complexity of another person (or a whole family), and you can reach a place of mental gridlock that makes the Eisenhower at rush hour seem tame.

Cliff and I were in gridlock last week: Maggie was scheduled to have tubes put in her ears, but we were having second thoughts. Did she really need it? And how much was it going to cost?

The problem with decision making is you can never have all the answers: no amount of consultations with surgeons or pediatricians could tell me if Maggie might outgrow the ear infection problem on her own. Or if tubes would help with her language development.

We had to make the decision somewhat in the dark. We debated over a few days, and then finally decided to do it.

This got me thinking about how we, as a couple, make decisions. Sure, we do the whole pros-and-cons list stuff; Cliff plays devil's advocate with relish. We debate when we disagree. But there are a few other tools we also employ - tools you may not find in a standard communication textbook. So here are three unorthodox ideas for decision making:


1. Don't talk, at least at first.
If you've read Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink, you know there's good reason to go with your gut instinct. Often we invest a great deal of time in thinking through a decision making process, only to arrive at the conclusion we already held at the beginning.

Of course, if you're making a decision as a team, you've got two gut instincts to consider.

On more than one occasion Cliff and I have short-circuited the the decision-making process by each writing down our instincts on a post it note BEFORE we begin to talk about the decision.

We did this when we were thinking about joining the Peace Corps. Our recruiter called us and presented a choice: we could go to the region we wanted (Africa) and teach kindergarten (yikes!), or we could go to the South Pacific (an area we'd never considered) and work in our preferred professional fields.

After we hung up the phone we pulled out our post it notes ... and when we shared what we'd written with each other, we both found the words "South Pacific" on the paper.

Obviously, this made the decision easier. But what if your paper says something different than his? That means you have a starting point for a conversation: you can work to convince each other, or work toward a compromise. Either way, it's nice to know where your partner is starting at.



2. Defer to the person who has invested more in the process.
A few years ago I had dinner with a friend who had spent the day looking at houses with her husband. They each had a favorite, and it wasn't the same home. Both houses were within their means and met their needs, so how did they decide?

My friend is a stay at home mom. Since she was the one who would spend more time in the home - and be more impacted by the home's distance from the kids schools, the grocery store, or gym - it only seemed fair that her preference bear a little greater weight in the decision making process.

Cliff and I often defer to each other when one of us has more invested in the process. I give him more say in what Dish Network plan we have, for example, because he's spent more time on the phone with their customer service department. When it comes to vacations, I'm often the one who does the planning: as a result, Cliff tends to defer decisions regarding what hotel we stay at or what sites we visit.

3. Don't make a permanent decision.
Have you ever noticed there are some decisions you have to make over and over and over? Like whether or not to go to church on Sunday morning, which family to spend the holidays with, or how much money you can afford to spend on vacation.

Some decisions just reoccur. That's to be expected. But if the process of making these reoccurring decisions is always painful, then you may be facing a problem that can't be solved. Marriage researcher John Gottman says every couple has them and they aren't necessarily a bad thing.

Cliff and I often encounter this in our attitudes toward where to spend Christmas. I feel it's necessary to be with our families, and am willing to rotate years so we spend equal amount of time with his and mine. Cliff longs for our kids to have Christmas morning memories of waking up in their own home, just as he did as a kid.

We'll probably never change each others mind, so we have to find a workable solution each year. Following Gottman's advice, we aren't looking for a permanent decision. Instead we just need to find the compromise that works for this Christmas.

Unsolvable problems can be major or minor, but they don't have to cause rifts. (Gottman offers some techniques for managing them in "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.") The key is to sidestep a permanent solution, and work each time toward a temporary compromise instead.

So there you have it - three unorthodox decision making ideas. Do you have your own? Please share!