Decide Well

It's the basis of life, after all

This shortie started out as a Note, but then I thought it might be useful for many of you given that we all have to tackle increasingly important decisions as Clown Train keeps puffing away at full speed. So here it is on the stack.

There are two different but related modes of decision-making that actually lead to good outcomes.

The first is the blink-decision: the right course of action instantly and briefly pops up in your mind’s peripheral vision. It’s that first subtle rush of energy when you ask yourself a question or think about options, or even when the question isn’t fully formed in your mind yet. The problem is that this shadowy, yet very clear impression is often drowned out fast once your rational mind or your emotions kick in. You start second-guessing, talking yourself out of it, or start feeling fear of the answer. (Yes, blink impressions aren’t about emotion; they are above and beyond both intellectual and emotional faculties.) All of this goes so quickly that most of the time you’ll have forgotten all about your first blink, indeed that it was even there. You missed it and dismissed it — just another of those chaotic-seeming movements of the mind you’re not used to paying attention to. The good news is that this can be changed.

Practicing to perceive and discern the blink-type answer in the periphery of your consciousness depends on cultivating an open awareness to the phenomenon, and learning to recognize its “taste.” You must also practice how to spot the almost-instantaneous resistance a part of you throws at you right after the blink, vastly outshining — or rather overshadowing — its misty figure: the stuff that drives you away from it.

A good way to practice recognizing the blink moment is to study it when there’s nothing really at stake, and therefore the counter-forces of fear and rationalizing are at their weakest, such as when choosing a meal at a restaurant: read the menu, listen for the blink, and stick to it. You'll seldom be disappointed. Or, if you are, it will turn out it has still been the right choice: you might get a giggle out of the miserable food, bond with someone over the experience, whatever. Come up with your own ideas for trivial decisions you can practice “blinking” with: what movie to watch, when to do the cleaning or lawn-mowing, which airline to book, what to cook etc. A nice side effect is that you’ll spend way less energy taking those little decisions that otherwise can be absurdly intense. Observe the outcomes of those decisions to check if you have done it right, in a sort of ongoing experiment.

Even if you have practiced listening to the blink moment and taking the information seriously, however, sometimes it’s just not there. Not every decision lends itself to The Blink, and so you won’t see it. Otherwise, we would never have to think about decisions at all. Which brings us to the second mode of decision-making that is particularly appropriate for bigger and important decisions, like changing careers or moving to another country and the like. Not that there can’t be blink moments here as well, and you should always pay attention and be open to the peripheral vision of the blinkworld. But in such cases, oftentimes the blink engine needs some fuel in the form of data. To that end the traditional approach of making lists with pros and cons, thinking the different options through from multiple angles, is the way to go. Sometimes this process needs to go on for days, weeks, even years. Here it is crucial that you give the blink engine time to absorb the fuel, which means you can’t think about the decision all the time: make your lists, then forget about it all and do something else. Come back to think it through, then detach. Talk to someone about it and seek advice (in fact, you should absolutely seek advice from wise folks you trust), then switch gears again. And so on. Now the interesting thing is that at some point, the blink moment will arrive: you’ll just know the right answer — if you can detect and discern the blink. Remember we’re talking about peripheral vision, so you can’t will the blink into existence, and the moment you focus on it, away it goes. The usual counter-forces are at play too: fear, rationalization, instant second-guessing. What often happens is that you get the blink, but then dismiss it, only to (hopefully) remember it later, sort of: “Ah, I knew all along what to do, but only now do I see it.”

The thing with true blink decisions is that they are always right. Often this is apparent almost instantly, especially with trivial stuff: the food you order that you first tried to talk yourself out of which ends up delicious and deeply satisfying; that present you instantly were drawn to but which suddenly seems too expensive or too strange but which you still buy and which, sure enough, delights the one you give it to; that bit of work something told you could be spontaneously finished quickly now even though you thought it could wait but which as it turns out actually wouldn’t have been done in time had you waited because something else suddenly popped up in your life that needed attention. Things like that. In other cases, however, you might not be able to see right away that a blink decision made sense, and you just have to trust it. Somewhere down the line, it will become apparent that it was indeed the right decision.

Since life is basically an endless stream of small (and big) decisions, including decisions about what to think and where to focus your attention, learning how to make better decisions is an incredibly important skill. Getting a good grasp of how the blinkworld works and how you can read it won’t magically solve all problems, but it is deeply liberating and absolutely reduces stress, torture-by-mind, and bumbling blindly through life. In fact, the blinks might be something like guideposts pointing to your destiny.

Learning to decide well is like learning to play an instrument: if you are terrible at it, you will either avoid it at all cost (that’s the chronically indecisive people who struggle even to choose a dinner, to say nothing of more important decisions), or you will enter the spotlight and ruin the concert with your bad playing (that’s the rash ones who take quick but wrong decisions all the time, producing disaster after disaster). What both types lack is practice: practice reading the blink and sticking to it.

This article ends here, which means you are faced with your next decision: what do you do now? Try listening to the blink, the mind’s peripheral vision, where clarity emerges out of the fog like a brief flash of light illuminating a dark, distant space. Poof — it’s gone, but if you caught it, then feel it, taste it, and remember it even while the counter-forces are mounting their attack.

Perhaps your blink was to acknowledge my work is worth something to you; and for the briefest of instants, you just knew you wanted to support me with a paid subscription. But then the rationalizations kicked in: what do you really get out of it given that my work is free? It doesn’t make a difference anyway. You can’t support all those people on Substack now can you. The fear, too: who knows how your financial situation will look like in two months, could be you’ll need those bucks. No point being irresponsible with your money, yes?

My unselfish advice: screw that and go with your blink. Thank you all.

Related short post:

Shoot That Arrow