But making poor choices because I'm tired can be avoided. I can and do make most of my decisions in the daylight hours. I wait until I can think clearly, have done some research, and discussed possible options with others. I do my best to make good choices the first time so I can avoid the consequences of bad ones later on.
Apparently, a lot of folks feel the way I do, which (according to the Heath brothers) is a big part of the problem. We need to prepare to be wrong.
Why? Because we can't know what we don't know. We can't be certain the conclusion we've reached isn't taking us in the wrong direction. We can't know if the bottom will fall out of the housing market. We are not able to discern whether the new boss will be better than the old--and even if he is, that he won't suddenly depart for a new position. Or, under the best of circumstances, be prepared for what we'll do if the great idea we had really takes off and we're unprepared to meet the demands of all our new customers.
Not only is it impossible to know what the future will bring, but most of us have a bad habit of insulating ourselves from opinions and ideas not in agreement with our own. Even when others seem to be in agreement, they won't always tell us the truth. They're a lot nicer than they might be and we suffer as a result.
In their blog, the Heath brothers tell a fascinating story about banana bread. Apparently, an office worker had the habit of bringing low-fat baked goods to work. They were a bit dry, but you know how office environments go. Fellow employees ate them anyway because people almost always gobble up anything left in the office break room. Whenever the employees saw the worker's wife at social functions, they always thanked her for her baking--even though they all thought the baked goods a bit dry. She responded by baking more; they reacted by continuing to eat what showed up at work.
One day the husband of the bread-baking spouse announced his wife was starting a catering business and began hinting heavily for business. Based on what he was hearing and she was experiencing, the couple figured this was a slam dunk decision. What they didn't know was that the office employees had been eating the dry baked goods because they were free and because there were no alternatives to compete for consumption. They wrongly assumed others would pay for the same items they had ate for free. Based on their experience, they couldn't know what they didn't know.
Combating What We Don't Know
So how do we combat the problem of not knowing what we don't know. The brothers Heath suggest a number of things, but here are a couple of ideas to get you started.
1) Look for dis-confirming information. In the case of the baked goods, the banana bread-baking wife might have tried offering a few loaves for sale at a local farmer's market before she embarked on a catering business of her own. If she failed to develop repeat customers, this might have been a good sign a catering business was not a wise choice.
2) Set a tripwire. A "tripwire" refers to a deadline or boundary that will cause us to re-evaluate a choice. For instance, a couple might agree that the husband can invest a specific amount on a new business venture before the decision to move forward must be re-evaluated. This helps to prevent losing one's life savings before you know what has happened. It also contributes to marital harmony.
A college student might pursue internship opportunities before making a final career choice.
A budding artist might try selling a few paintings or pieces of music before resigning from her "day job."
In both positive and negative circumstances, a tripwire can signal us to turn off the automatic pilot and take a closer look at why we're doing what we're doing before we invest ourselves or our resources more heavily.
Several years ago my husband and I moved from a small city in northern Illinois to a suburb of Chicago. In all of our previous moves it had been necessary for us to rent before we purchased a home. This time was different. Our home in Belvidere was sold so we shopped for the house we wanted without worrying about whether or not our house would sell. This was a good thing, right? That's what we thought, but we should have prepared to be wrong.
It wasn't long before we found a house we liked, completed the financial transactions and moved in. What we didn't know then was that only 14 months later we would be moving again, this time to southwest Missouri. We left behind an unsold house and lost several thousand dollars in the process because we moved so quickly. We eventually sold our home in Palatine and moved into a home of our own in Springfield more than a year later, but if we had only rented in our previous location we could have saved ourselves a lot of money and trouble. It was just another example of how we couldn't know what we didn't know.
I don't plan on moving again anytime soon, but if I were this time I'd prepare to be wrong. I give consideration to the possibility that the new job might not be all I had imagined. I would recognize the value of getting to really know a community before choosing a neighborhood in which to live. I would accept the very real possibility that it might take longer for my house to sell than I had hoped. Knowing all these things, I would still move ahead, but I would do so knowing a contingency plan might need to be made operational.
Humbly and decisively yours,
Dr. Jennifer Baker
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