Transcript & Summary: How to Make Difficult Decisions (without overthinking)

[00:00] every day we make choices that have the potential to change the course of Our Lives whether it's choosing what subjects to study in school or starting a YouTube channel or asking that girl out on a date the choices we make each day can massively affect our happiness and how our lives play out but we almost never stop and think about how to actually get better at making these choices so firstly what does it mean to make better choices in life like there's no objective criteria of what is a good decision broadly and so I wanted to find [00:25] better as essentially more intentional or more conscious or more in line with my core values and so the way I see it is that the key to making Better Life Choices is to find different ways to look within and figure out how can we tease out what we actually want from a given situation over the last few years of making various Life Choices I found a series of questions that I found really helpful to ask myself so that whenever I'm struggling with a life choice or struggling with a difficult decision I [00:51] run myself through some of these questions and generally I get at an interesting answer and that helps me nudge my decision towards something that's a bit more intentional and a little bit conscious so question number 10 is in one year's time what would I regret not having started today there's that classic quote that you know the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago the second best time is now and I think that often some of the most difficult choices in life are the decision to start something new for [01:15] example should I start working out I could just always do it later but in one year's time well I regret not having started it today and this was actually the core decision that made me start my YouTube channel five years ago when I started it a bit of a backstory initially before starting this YouTube channel I was actually thinking it was going to start it a whole year later I was imagining I was in med school at the time and I was imagining I should start a YouTube channel once I become a doctor [01:36] because then I can Vlog Life as a doctor but then I asked myself hang on in a year's time when I'm a doctor will I regret not having started this earlier and the answer was hell yes and I realized that I should start the YouTube channel right now this was 2017 when I was still in med school because in one year's time I would have just gotten better at making videos your first 50 videos are going to be terrible so I'm kind of hoping that over the next year I'll make my 50 terrible and then when we hit August the 1st 2018 [02:03] when life as a junior doctor starts and then I'd be able to kind of hit the ground running and be able to actually film decent Vlogs and so I wasn't really expecting any growth or any kind of like traction or anything on the channel it was literally just I'm gonna be glad I've had a year of practice before I actually do this properly and so if you're struggling with any kind of decision right now that involves starting something new or maybe even quitting something ask yourself will you a year from now wish that you had [02:25] started a year ago all right coming in at Point number nine it's what would my mental Board of advisors say now this is a really good strategy essentially the idea is that you want to formulate a mental Board of advisors what this is is a handful of people that can be living or dead whose work or who's thinking you admire and appreciate and you have them as your mental Board of advisors in my mental Board of advisors I have a handful of people I have Derek sivers and Tim Ferriss and Ryan holiday and Cal [02:49] Newport they don't even know they're in my mental Board of advisors but I'm familiar with all four of their work enough and I appreciate their philosophy and the way they think about life so that if I'm ever struggling with a decision I'll just run that through my okay what would Cal say what would Derek say and that results in interesting things I'm not saying your mental Board of advisors has to be these for white American dudes it can be whoever you want it to be but usually it's like it's like this thing like it's really hard to [03:14] kind of take advice for ourselves but it's very easy for us to give advice to other people and so zooming out a little bit and thinking what would these like fictional or real or whatever characters in my mind say in response to the situation actually helps you figure out what you personally want to do in response to that situation for example one dilemma I was struggling with a few months ago was trying to figure out to what extent I actually want to grow this business like you know we're gonna do a [03:35] couple million dollars in profit this year do we want to do more than that next year or like way more than that like what's what's the point is it worth putting in loads of extra work to make loads of extra money and so I ran it through the mental Board of advisors and basically all four of them the answer was nope optimize for lifestyle optimize for the things that you're interested in and energized by don't worry about making more money because making more money does not actually correlate to more happiness Beyond a certain point so [03:58] that was useful that was useful like clearly the fact that that was the conclusion that I reached from my MBA my mental Board of advisors meant that I knew deep down that that was the right decision but just that framing allowed me to get there a little bit quicker all right in at question number eight we have the question what is the risk of doing nothing now again this comes into play when we're making choices in life about generally like trying something new or taking a bit of a risk it might be quitting your job or it might be [04:21] asking that girl out or it might be starting a new venture or a new business or whatever and in action are you doing nothing often feels like the safe path but actually it's worth asking ourselves like what are the risks of doing nothing like what what is actually going to happen usually inaction does not actually have zero consequences doing nothing is also a decision just like doing something is a decision by the way if you're enjoying this video so far I would love it if you could hit the like [04:43] button for the YouTube algorithm I was at this uh YouTube conference a few weeks ago and apparently the like button still actually makes a difference so if you can hit the like button that'll be lovely all right and at number seven we have the question of what core value am I optimizing for now this involves the whole thing of actually figuring out what are your own personal values what what do you personally value and generally one of the ways you can figure this out is think about a difficult decision you've had to make in the past [05:05] where the choice wasn't entirely clear and think about okay the choice that I made in that context assuming I'm happy with that choice like if I had to pick like the thing that I valued above all else to make that choice what would that thing be okay coming in at number seven we have the deathbed question which is that when I'm on my deathbed what will I regret having done or not having done now this is obviously really helpful because it generally nudges us towards doing the thing that feels a little bit [05:31] more interesting generally the sorts of things that people regret are the things that they didn't do rather than the things that they did do and so if you've got a choice for example to take a gap Year from University and travel around the world for a year that's probably something you're not going to regret having done but you'll probably regret not having done it if that makes sense interestingly there's a book about the top five regrets of the dying here is what they are number one I wish I'd had [05:53] the courage to live a life true to myself not the life others expected of me number two I wish I hadn't worked so hard brackets on stuff I didn't care about number three I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings number four I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends and number five I wish I'd let myself be happier this is interesting I often think about this list at one point I even had this list of like things that literally the top of my kind of daily notes page when I was doing journaling I [06:15] gotta stopped doing that but it was it was a really helpful reminder and honestly I find that this list really helps guide my own decision making because again if for example I'm doing a thing where it's like I could work really extra hard to do this thing and then I look at the regrets of the dying where it's like I wish I hadn't worked so hard I wish I'd stay in touch with friends then I think you know what will I actually regret not having done this work related thing probably not but instead could I use that time to maybe [06:38] reach out to a friend that I haven't spoken to in a while and so hopefully you know a little bit trying to make better choices in life trying to mitigate against the risk that I might regret these things when I'm on my deathbed but generally the deathbed test is also a good way to say are you just scared or are you doing something that you actually are unlikely to regret and you'll be glad that you did further down the line all right in at number six we have the question of how certain am I about this decision and how certain do I [07:00] need to be to make this decision a lot of us like even when it comes to these sorts of questions we can end up over analyzing everything and overthinking things for example the decision to start a YouTube channel or not a lot of people get hung up on Wow will I will I be able to make a full-time living from this I was like the answer is who knows there's no there's no certainty in life but how certain do you need to be to try it out probably not that certain maybe you have 30 certainty that or 30 likelihood that [07:25] maybe you'd be able to make something of this provided you put in the work is it worth trying with 30 kind of certainty I would say it probably because it also gives you skills along the way and it's fun and also helps you meet people along the way so you don't need to have 100 certainty because if you wait for 100 certainty you're just going to end up wasting your life away broadly not making any decisions because you're never going to have 100 certainty the timing is never going to be quite right [07:46] all right question number five is how might I treat this like an experiment there's another great thing like generally you'll find a lot of these questions like at least the way that I think about decisions is that they nudge me towards doing the thing that is a little bit scarier a little bit riskier because we as humans and I think me definitely we have a bias towards risk aversion we have a bias towards trying to avoid a sense of loss and so the question of like how can I treat this as an experiment I find really nice because [08:09] when something is an experiment you're not trying for it to be successful you're not putting so much pressure on it it's just an experiment the decision to launch that business is just an experiment if you're having to sync 300 000 into into starting that business it's not an experiment anymore it's like a big deal but is there some things more you can do to run the test to treat it a little bit more like an experiment could you maybe run a school card or run an event or try doing it for free or do a [08:32] minimum viable product could you do something a little bit experimental to test the idea and see whether it even is the right decision to make for example last year I was still thinking that I wanted to work in medicine part-time and there was a part of me that was thinking you know what I'm just gonna to apply for a medical training specialty but I'll then have a chat with them once I get in once I've done the interviews and exams and stuff and I'll be like hey I want to go part-time two days a week but [08:52] I thought no hang on hang on this is a very big decision like to apply for a whole like residency like specialty pathway and then like all the work that's gone into it could I treat this as an experiment how could I treat this like an experiment and so I ran this hypothesis I said I reckon I'm going to enjoy life where I work one or two days a week as a doctor and spend the rest of the time doing my YouTube and internet and businessy type stuff how do I run that as an experiment well I just picked [09:16] up a few extra ships in the emergency department and tried to recreate that life for myself where I was working one day a week as a doctor and I realized oh within a few weeks I actually don't really enjoy this I'd rather work zero days a week as a doctor rather than one or two days a week as a doctor and I'm glad I figured that out because I just ran the experiment in a fairly easy fashion rather than applying for a whole program and kind of hoping that at the point where I'd gotten into the program [09:38] then I was going to go part-time and then I was going to enjoy it and so it's kind of the same with a lot of decisions people make around subjects to study at University day or careers to go into or jobs to apply for like there are often ways of running smaller experiments to reduce the uncertainty in your calculation bearing in mind the previous point that you can never fully reduce the uncertainty to zero percent all right question number four is do I want to be the sort of person who does X now [10:00] this speaks to an idea that's common throughout the research around like habit formation and goal setting which is broadly that if you have a particular identity that you're trying to go for like having identity based goals and habits and decisions generally leads to leads you to better outcomes than having like specific task baits based habits or goals or decisions and so if it comes to let's say a trivial decision of how often do I want to work out it's like do I want to be the sort of person that [10:24] does exercise every day actually yeah I do I would like to be that sort of person and so that's a decision about identity it's a decision about what sort of person I want to be which nudges me more towards kind of doing some exercise every day do I want to be the sort of person that makes healthy choices about what they eat yeah I do because that's important to me and I've realized that's important to me because I've asked myself that particular question and so it becomes less about you know right now [10:46] do I want to go for that McDonald's drive-through even though I often do and more about like in general who is the sort of person I want to be and that generally I find at least help to nudge me towards a more kind of intentional and conscious way of making Life Choices oh and by the way I'd love to hear from you if you have any kind of Frameworks for decision making or making better choices in life or questions or journaling prompts that you ask yourself I'd love for you to leave a comment down below I read all the comments I can't [11:09] respond to all of them I often heart them when I'm on the toilet but like I would love to see if there's any other questions that I can start applying to my life and it would just be generally nice for us to see kind of what other people are coming up with in terms of making better decisions in life alright and at number three we have the question of will this energize me or will this drain me I think this is great this is one of one of the core more kind of questions that I use to decide whether [11:28] or not to say yes to an event or something that I get invited to I ask myself if this was happening like right now would it energize me or would it drain me things that energize me are broadly doing work related stuff and hanging out with the team and having dinner with friends things that drain me are normally having meetings about stuff that I'm not particularly interested in or even doing like work related stuff where it's not particularly interesting or energizing to me but I'm doing it for the money that generally is going to be [11:52] like a draining situation and actually these days a lot of the decisions that we make as a business around like what direction we're going to go is by running the choice through the filter of will this energize or drain me I'm in a very privileged position because I run the business and so I can actually just do the things that energize me we were thinking at one point of running like a service for businesses where we would go into these like big companies and help them out with their YouTube channels and [12:13] stuff and then I asked myself would this energize me or would it drain me it would make a lot of money because people kept saying to us hey these big corporations have so much money you could make you can make millions by doing this I was like so that's pretty draining I don't really like the idea of going to a big Corporation and being like hey guys I'm going to teach you how to do YouTube I much prefer the idea of like reading cool stuff learning cool stuff and making videos about it for the audience on the internet then I do going [12:33] to like I don't know KPM GHQ and teaching them how to do video all right in at number two we have a quitting framework that Stephen Bartlett's book happy sexy millionaire which is actually a really good read talks about and so the framework is basically this like firstly you ask yourself the question of why am I thinking about quitting and generally the two options there is it sucks or it's hard if the thing is hard you ask yourself is the challenge worth the potential reward and if the answer is yes then you keep going but if the [12:56] answer is no then you quit if the thing sucks then you ask yourself do I believe I could make it not suck if the answer to that is no or I've tried my best and I haven't been able to make this thing not suck then wait you can quit but if the answer is yes then you ask yourself the final question which is is it worth the effort to try and make it not suck and if the answer is yes then don't quit but if the answer is no then you can quit honestly this is pretty good like I came across this when I read his book [13:16] like last year and I found that this was how I defaulted to making decisions about things to quit but now that I've got this framework I literally just run stuff through the things like do I want to do probably not and this usually leads to me quitting things that I actually realized that I fundamentally don't want to do which again this you know speaking to this idea of making Better Life Choices a better life choice is the one that feels more intentional and more conscious based on what we actually want [13:39] and then the final question that I find really helpful to reflect on is Tim ferriss's Fear setting exercise where kind of question it's it's a series of questions but question one is essentially what am I not doing because I'm scared and then there's a few follow-ups to that so what am I missing out on by not doing the thing that I'm scared of number two why am I not doing this thing it's like what are the other reasons why it could be not doing the thing number three what's the absolute worst case scenario if I did the thing [14:01] number four what can I do to mitigate against the risk of that worst case scenario happening or to deal with the worst case scenario when it does happen and number five if I had to reverse this decision how would I go about it and I find that generally if I'm struggling with something or struggling with a decision generally when it comes to work or even my personal life running it through this filter of what am I scared of what's the worst case scenario and how do I mitigate against risk of that generally makes me realize that I have [14:23] overblown the fears of all of this stuff in my mind and I see this a lot with students in my part-time YouTuber Academy where people are scared to put themselves out there on camera because they're like scared of what their friends and family and colleagues and co-workers and bosses kind of think and then if you ask them they're like hey what's what's the actual worst case scenario how do you mitigate against this if the worst case scenario happened would you would you be able to survive what do you think is the actual [14:43] probability of the worst case scenario just like laying the things out helps people realize that oh I was actually scared and I was like because fear is like a powerful emotion it's easy to kind of overblow fears of particular things in our own minds now earlier on the video we talked about the question of what's something that I would regret not having started today and actually one of my answers to that question was Heights who are very kindly sponsoring this video if you haven't heard by now Heights is a brain care smart supplement [15:07] I've literally been taking it since November 2021 and it's two capsules that I take every single day that have over 20 different micronutrients vitamins minerals blueberry extract omega-3 like these micronutrients that have a strong evidence base why they're useful for the brain now obviously in an Ideal World we would all be getting all the nutrients that we need from our diet but looking at the stats especially here in the UK 99 of people are not on the gold standard Mediterranean diet and so we're [15:32] all deficient in various different things and so the thing I like about Heights is that it's just two capsules every morning I take it with water just after brushing my teeth and it means that I've got my bases covered in terms of micronutrients if for whatever reason I didn't manage to eat perfectly healthy that day which is unfortunately most days if you want to check it out it's super easy to sign up you just go to yourheits.com which is also linked in the video description and you just put in your address and you can sign up to a [15:54] monthly or quarterly subscription I have the quarterly subscription because it's cheaper and there's fewer deliveries and just every three months it'll just send you like three boxes and you just get through one box a month and it's great 100 would recommend it and if you use the coupon code Ali 15 and check out then that will give you an extra 15 off the already discounted price of the quarterly subscription so thank you so much Heights for sponsoring this video and helping me improve my own brain care [16:16] which ultimately allows me to make better choices in life and thank you so much for watching if you enjoyed this video you might like to check out this video over here which is a book summary that I've done about Atomic habits which is a fantastic book by James Clear which is all about building better habits and breaking bad ones which kind of relates to this stuff around making better decisions in life because to be honest a lot of our life choices are associated with the habits that we have so you can [16:35] check out my video about Atomic habits right here thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video bye