Making Decisions
By Abby Bezrutczyk
In the field of environmental science, my professors will sometimes refer to the ever-mysterious “decision-maker,” a position never clearly defined but someone who needs a lot of help (our research is often aimed to help them with their never-ending task). I gather that the decision-maker is a person who has the power, say, a governor, to decide what’s going to happen. As the decision maker, how will you deal with sea level rise in your coastal community?
The ultimate problem in environmental decision making, and really any decision making, is uncertainty. The best gift for a decision-maker would be a crystal ball, or a time machine. Instead, we give them “structured decision making” (SDM) to help them reach confident conclusions. We could also take some notes from SDM to help us be at peace with the uncertainties involved in our own decision-making.
Instead of seeing an issue and jumping between different ways to solve it, the idea behind SDM is that you slow down and think things through. You need to figure out your problem and come up with objectives, alternatives, consequences, and tradeoffs, mixing a lot of math into the model in order to make the best decision.
“But how do you know if a decision is good?” someone asks—a question that is equally relevant to our own lives. The answer in this case is that the decision is good if the process by which you generated the decision is good; the “goodness” does not depend on the ultimate outcome.
Making personal decisions can feel pretty different from making environmental ones; in our own decisions, we acutely feel the consequences. Your major or the job you choose have vast impacts on your future. Making a decision can feel like a weight—what if you make the wrong one? What is the best decision?
In countless contexts—from what I should eat, to what I should do during the summer, to how I should prioritize my time—I’ve asked myself what I should do. The word “should” carries a lot of baggage. For me, it easily becomes a question of, “What would the people around me approve of?” or, “What does my religion say about this?” This can lead to conflicting advice, dead-ends, and general frustration—anything but clarity.
Again and again, I find myself turning to a “structure” of four simple questions that I found years ago in this video [1]. Like SDM, it breaks the problem down, makes trade-offs clear, and forces you to consider what you value. Unlike SDM, it lacks the mathematical aspect and is more personal; it forces you to ask deeper questions about the decision you’re facing, to meet yourself with honesty, and to draw on your belief system in a helpful way.
Ultimately, it centers around a choice of whether or not to seek a specific opportunity:
Is it a good door? Is this opportunity objectively good, for anyone?
Is it an open door? Is this opportunity available for me?
Is it a wise door? Knowing myself, is this something that’s good for me?
Is it a door that I want?
This last question can be the hardest, but it can also be the most freeing. We should give value to our desires when making decisions about ourselves. It might mean that the objectively good summer opportunity you were offered just isn’t something you want to do—and it’s within your power to turn it down. It might mean that adding another class to your schedule isn’t wise based on how you manage your time—and reflecting on that wisdom will help you to decide.
I know that when I’ve used this “structure,” I’ve slowed down to think things through and have taken time to address alternatives, which made me more confident in my decision and confident in the good process from which it was derived.
And while these questions have never actually made decisions for me, they have made it easier to see what I value. It’s up to us decision-makers to figure out what those values are and how important they are to us—in both mathematical structured decision making, and personal decisions.
For me, the power of these questions is that they bring decisions into the realm of meditation. I use them to examine myself honestly and seek guidance from my faith, asking in prayer: is this good, open, wise, and wanted?
As I wait for discernment, the simple act of prayer reminds me of the truth that I know: I have freedom to decide, and no decision that I make will take me away from God’s presence and the promises that give me hope. No decision that I make could be eternally wrong. By considering the options like this, the weight is lifted.
While environmental decision-makers can take comfort in the fact that the decision-making process itself was good, as Christians, we too can take comfort in the process. Paired with this is the truth that no matter what we decide, God will always be there on the other side.
Sources:
[1] “4 Helpful Rules for Discernment” Video, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne8n-1ATd1s&t=5s.