The Art of Manliness - Life's 10 Biggest Decisions

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Now, how many

00:00:11.220 of your life's 10 biggest decisions have you already made? My guest today, psychologist,

00:00:15.760 Dr. Adrian Camilleri would often ask this question to friends and family and found that it generated

00:00:20.180 a lot of interesting conversation. It also generated a lot of his own thoughts, which

00:00:23.800 made him want to dive more deeply into it and empirically study it and other related questions

00:00:27.660 as well. The result was the biggest life decisions project, which we'll be talking about on the show

00:00:32.140 today. Adrian first explains the criteria that define a big life decision, the most common ones

00:00:36.560 people make, and which of these decisions people rank as being the most important. We then talk

00:00:40.500 about the numbers and types of big life decisions people typically make in each decade of their lives

00:00:44.540 and how these decisions tend to be front-loaded in your 20s, but you'll still have a surprising number

00:00:48.360 to make in your later years too. Adrian shares which decisions people tend to look back on

00:00:52.520 positively and are correlated with higher life satisfaction and which tend to lead to poor

00:00:56.260 outcomes and regret. We also get in the way people can both underestimate and overestimate

00:01:00.160 the importance of some decisions before ending with what Adrian has learned by working on the

00:01:03.420 project about how to make good life decisions. After the show's over, check out our show notes

00:01:07.300 at aom.is slash 10 decisions. Adrian Camilleri, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Brett.

00:01:22.260 So you are a consumer psychologist, but you've been doing some research on big life decisions

00:01:29.240 that people make. I'm curious, how did you get started researching big life decisions? How is

00:01:33.140 this connected to your work as a consumer psychologist? Well, as a psychologist, I'm really

00:01:38.820 interested in how people make decisions. Now, most of the decisions that I tend to study are those that

00:01:45.860 you might call small, such as how to choose different options on a menu. But a few years ago,

00:01:51.920 I found myself having to make a number of very large decisions. So I was deciding whether to

00:01:56.840 get married to my longtime girlfriend. I was living in the US at the time, and I had to decide what job

00:02:02.080 to take and whether it was going to be in the US or back home in Australia. And then a little bit

00:02:07.760 after that, I was deciding whether or not to buy a house and have children. So these were so much more

00:02:13.720 important than the decision about what to choose off a menu. And most of my research wasn't really

00:02:20.660 helpful in making these bigger life decisions. And when I looked at the existing literature,

00:02:26.040 I didn't find much to help me there either. So I thought, there seems to be a bit of a gap here.

00:02:31.600 So that's when I decided to start this big life decisions project. And it really began by asking

00:02:37.800 people a pretty simple question, which was, how many of your life's 10 biggest decisions have you

00:02:43.640 already made? And that's a question that really gets the conversation going. So from that point forward,

00:02:49.500 I decided to take a little bit of a more scientific approach and get people's answers to that question

00:02:54.500 and related questions. Okay. So let's talk definitions. In your research, how are you defining

00:02:59.820 a big life decision? My working definition of a big life decision at the start of this project was

00:03:06.060 one in which you explicitly are making a choice between two or perhaps more options, knowing that

00:03:13.640 the outcome is going to have a significant, possibly long-term impact on how you and maybe others live.

00:03:20.480 So that's how I started thinking about, but I really wanted to know what others thought the definition

00:03:25.580 was. So I've asked hundreds of people to tell me what their definition is. And I've taken those responses

00:03:33.140 and I've hired people to read through those responses independent of me to try to synthesize what are

00:03:40.140 the core features of a big decision. And we've come up with nine or 10. So first is the decisions

00:03:46.460 rarely made. So for example, getting married is a typical big life decision. And most people do that

00:03:53.180 once, maybe twice. Decision involves a lot of thinking. And because it's part of the definition,

00:04:00.360 people know they're making a big decision at the time. So they often spend a lot of time thinking

00:04:04.600 about it. The decision outcomes are uncertain. The decision often challenges our morals or values.

00:04:12.400 So for example, the decision to get an abortion is often a really big one. And that often challenges

00:04:17.900 people. The decision often requires significant investment of resources. So here I'm thinking about

00:04:24.820 things like buying a house. The decision rules out many other options. So if you pursue one career,

00:04:31.280 for example, you're ruling out every other career, big decisions tend to impact multiple areas of your

00:04:37.260 life, as well as multiple people in your life. They have long-term consequences. And big decisions

00:04:43.840 tend to be difficult to take back or undo. Gotcha. So those are the ideas of what makes a big life

00:04:52.600 decision a big life decision. When you looked at the research that you've done, these surveys you've done,

00:04:56.860 what are the most common big life decisions that people make?

00:05:01.840 Yes. I've asked hundreds of people to tell me about their biggest life decisions. And they were

00:05:07.280 basically open text boxes where people could tell me anything they wanted to. And I had some really

00:05:12.600 fascinating stories come up, but it was a mess initially. So I was really trying to come up with

00:05:18.040 some kind of structure. In the end, I came up with a structure that had nine decision categories.

00:05:24.380 And then within those 58 different decision types. So the decision categories are, the first one is

00:05:31.680 career-related big decisions. And the most common of these is to start a new job. There's the education

00:05:38.660 related decisions. And the most common here is to pursue a degree. There are family-related decisions.

00:05:46.240 And the most common one here is to have a child. There are finance-related decisions. The most common

00:05:53.060 being buying a home. We have relationship-related decisions. And the most common one here is

00:05:58.920 getting married. There are relocation-related decisions. The most common being to move to a new

00:06:05.160 state. There are self-destruction-type decisions. These are less common, but the most common among them is to

00:06:12.480 begin an addiction. And then we have the self-developmental decisions. Again, these are relatively less

00:06:18.240 common, but they include things like pursuing a religion or engaging in travel or holiday.

00:06:24.560 So out of that list, the most common decisions were to start a new job, get married, and pursue a degree.

00:06:31.140 And there were also some interesting differences in terms of who you asked. And by that, I mean,

00:06:37.040 the age of the person. So decisions that were made by those who were younger or described by those who

00:06:43.320 were younger tended to focus more on things like education. Whereas those who are older,

00:06:48.980 they tended to more often describe things like getting divorced and retiring.

00:06:54.720 Gotcha. I mean, we'll talk about how decisions change over the life course of a person.

00:07:00.160 So you just list off the most common decisions. So it's basically education, job, family, like marriage,

00:07:05.840 have kids. When you asked people and you did these surveys, did you ask them what they felt was

00:07:11.720 the most important decision out of all the major life decisions they made?

00:07:17.140 Yeah, I did. So I'd ask people to tell me about their 10 biggest life decisions so far. But then

00:07:23.160 I asked them, can you please rank those decisions from most to least important? And what we find is

00:07:29.560 that at the top of the list, the decision that's ranked as the most important is ending a life. And this

00:07:36.800 was often in the form of an abortion. And it wasn't very common, but when it was mentioned,

00:07:43.420 more than 50% of those who mentioned it put it right at the top of the list. And other decisions

00:07:49.660 that were put right at the top of the list were engaging in self-harm, getting married, having a

00:07:55.060 child and pursuing religion and spirituality. So again, it's interesting to look at this list because

00:08:00.940 as I said, ending a life was fairly rare, but getting married was very common. And about half

00:08:07.580 of those who mentioned getting married, again, put it at the top or second on their list. So we can

00:08:13.220 think about sort of decisions in two dimensions. One is how common are they? And also how important are

00:08:20.940 they when they happen? And so I think if you were to ask me, what is really the biggest decision in

00:08:26.260 life? It'd be a combination of most common and also most important. And that would be getting

00:08:32.060 married and then having a child. But then we have these other relatively uncommon decisions,

00:08:37.240 but when they're faced, they're often monumental. And I think, you know, when I was stepping back,

00:08:43.840 trying to like summarize what are these decisions representing? Is there a further abstraction I can

00:08:51.240 make? And it seemed like people were trying to solve kind of four basic questions in life. And

00:08:57.400 that was, you know, what kind of education should I be getting? How should I be earning a living?

00:09:02.700 Where should I put down roots? And perhaps most important, who should I put down those roots with?

00:09:09.480 I'm curious about this idea of like starting like self-harm. Do people consider that a decision?

00:09:14.660 Because I feel like oftentimes we think of like addiction or, you know, doing self-harm,

00:09:20.200 whether that's, I don't know, cutting yourself or something like that.

00:09:23.340 Right.

00:09:23.480 People don't really think like, I purposely thought about doing this. It just sort of

00:09:26.900 happens. I'm curious about that dynamic of like, is that really a decision?

00:09:31.740 Well, I guess it's up. I can't tell whether it's a decision. They tell me it was a decision.

00:09:36.360 And I should also point out that we're, I guess, getting in the sample of those who engaged in

00:09:40.320 self-harm and weren't successful in many cases in committing suicide, because obviously we don't get those

00:09:45.520 responses. So I think for many people, it was a decision. And for example,

00:09:49.800 cutting, it might be, you know, not an attempt to commit suicide, but maybe an attempt to get

00:09:55.960 attention and say, look, I'm in trouble here. I need help. And so I don't think many of them spent

00:10:01.360 a lot of time thinking about the decision before they made it. And we might talk later on about

00:10:06.260 which decisions people spent a lot of time thinking about versus those that they did not

00:10:10.720 spend much time thinking about. And certainly the self-destruction type decisions, such as engaging in

00:10:17.500 self-harm, committing a crime. These are decisions that people didn't spend very much time thinking

00:10:22.960 about.

00:10:24.100 When you talked to people about big decisions, did things come up about like what to do with

00:10:29.240 an elderly parent who's, you know, got some sort of terminal disease or has Alzheimer's? Did that

00:10:35.060 come up as well?

00:10:35.740 Yes. So the category of ending a life included potentially people who were on life support

00:10:43.160 and the decision maker was responsible for deciding what happened there. And one of the

00:10:48.080 other categories was choosing for another person. And often that was for a child, but sometimes it was

00:10:53.560 for a parent. And another decision was seeking medical treatment. And so sometimes that was for the

00:10:59.780 individual. Maybe let's say they had cancer and they've got different options on how to seek

00:11:04.500 treatment. But that could also be for a loved one.

00:11:07.780 Let's talk about when these decisions happen. So you mentioned earlier, there are differences

00:11:12.220 when people say they make big life decisions. When you're younger, typically education's on your mind

00:11:19.000 and you think that's a big life decision. What else are the differences across the life spectrum

00:11:23.800 when it comes to big life decisions?

00:11:26.380 Yeah. So I asked people that question I started with initially, which is how many of your life's 10

00:11:31.240 biggest decisions do you think you've already made? And it's a bit of a tricky question because

00:11:36.240 it requires you to kind of cycle forward in life and basically figure out, okay, when am I going to die

00:11:43.520 on that day? Hopefully many years from now, looking back on my life, how many of my 10 biggest life

00:11:49.620 decisions have I already made in the year 2021? But I did ask that question. I get some sensible

00:11:55.900 answers back. So those in their 20s, they say they've made about three, three and a half of their

00:12:02.180 10 biggest life decisions. Those in their 30s say they've made about four and a half. Those in their

00:12:10.280 40s say about five. Those in their 50s, about five and a half. Those in their 60s, about six and a half.

00:12:18.240 And those in their 70s, about seven. So there is this general increase, but it is interesting that it

00:12:24.800 kind of plateaus. And even those who are in their 70s, they think they've still got three big life

00:12:29.980 decisions lying ahead of them. So that's interesting. When we look at the age period at which most of

00:12:38.360 these decisions that have been made in the past were made, we see that it's something called the

00:12:44.720 reminiscence bump. And it actually shows that most of the memories and the decisions that people recall,

00:12:50.860 even for those who are 50, 60, 70 year old, they tend to be during the period of 20 to 29 years old.

00:12:58.540 So for every age group, most of the decisions were for the period of 20 to 29. And I guess that makes

00:13:05.640 sense. This tends to be the period where people really establish themselves. They get a degree,

00:13:12.240 maybe they start a career, they meet their life partner, they often buy a house. So

00:13:16.660 this is a fundamental period in life. And this tends to be the time where most of the memories

00:13:22.580 come from as well. I can also sort of break down the decisions in terms of those that tended to be

00:13:30.620 made earlier in life versus those that tend to be made later in life. So as you mentioned, it's the

00:13:35.740 education related decisions that tended to be made earlier in life, such as what university to go to,

00:13:41.740 what major to follow. There's also the self-destruction type decisions made earlier in

00:13:47.700 life. So beginning an addiction, committing crime, doing some silly things. And also we see things 0.63

00:13:53.660 like joining the military for those who are older, that happened when they were in their 20s.

00:13:59.500 And then the decisions that tend to be made later in life, these were things wouldn't surprise you,

00:14:05.880 such as retiring, making a will, taking social security, selling a home, closing down a business.

00:14:11.520 So I think the take-homes, I guess, are that big life decisions are front-loaded. You're most

00:14:18.460 likely to make them between ages of say 16 and 35. But although front-loaded, big decisions are

00:14:27.000 happening throughout one's life. So you may think at age, let's say 35, which is approximately where I'm

00:14:32.940 at, with a degree, you've got a job, a home, a spouse, child. It seems like most of my big life

00:14:40.040 decisions have already been made, but I'm probably wrong. And you are too, if you're thinking the same

00:14:45.420 thing, because life seems to have a way of constantly throwing curveballs. So in your future,

00:14:52.200 there may be postgraduate degrees and career changes, renovations, remarriages, even more kids.

00:14:58.900 And I guess, as I mentioned, even those who were 70, pushing 80 years old, they still thought that

00:15:07.180 there were a number of big life decisions lurking around the corner. And the data that I've collected

00:15:12.840 seems to suggest that they're probably correct. Yeah. If I look at my own experience, I feel like

00:15:19.000 I made most of my big life decisions in that time period, like 20 to 29. And it's interesting,

00:15:25.080 that's when I journaled a lot. I used to be a journaler and I don't, I haven't journaled in a

00:15:29.920 long time. And it's, I think it's because like, I don't have any big decisions to make, right? It's

00:15:37.080 mostly my life for like the past, I don't know, six years has been pretty much the same. Right.

00:15:44.400 So I've had kids, married, house, jobs, all right, school's done. But I mean, who knows, that could,

00:15:50.040 that could change any moment. Like you said, I could, you know, job could go

00:15:53.080 kaplunk or someone could get sick in your family. You could get a sickness and you're

00:15:57.200 forced to make a big life decision that you didn't even think you'd have to make.

00:16:01.120 Yeah. I mean, I, like you also wrote a journal when I was in my early twenties and have not done

00:16:05.480 that for a long time. And sort of the period in life that we're at now, maybe thirties, forties,

00:16:11.820 this is a high pressure time because we're in the middle of careers, paying off mortgages. We've got

00:16:18.260 younger children. We've also got older parents that we need to take care of.

00:16:21.940 So it's, it's, it's a really busy time. If you look at the judgments of happiness,

00:16:27.100 this tends to be the lowest period for most people because it's so stressful,

00:16:32.140 but I think I can assure you there will be some big life decisions ahead of you.

00:16:37.640 I don't know if you looked at this, but one thing I thought of as you were talking was

00:16:40.760 the trend in people marrying later and how this is maybe crammed life decisions together

00:16:47.420 that they otherwise wouldn't, would have been more spaced out if they'd gotten married earlier.

00:16:51.260 One thing I've heard is, you know, as you get married later, you know, you have to make that

00:16:54.620 decision of like to have kids a lot sooner than maybe than you would if you were, you got married

00:16:59.740 if you're 24. But if you're getting married when you're 37, you might have to make that decision

00:17:04.220 really fast. And then you have a kid, let's say you have a kid. Then you have, you have the challenge,

00:17:09.540 like you have the challenge of making decisions for your kids, but then you also have to think,

00:17:12.120 well, man, I got my parents, they've, they're older, they've got issues. And now you have this

00:17:17.040 situation where you have people making a lot of big life decisions. They otherwise would have been

00:17:21.600 more spaced out if they had made other life decisions earlier. Does that make sense?

00:17:27.540 Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I looked or have too many insights from my data on this, but you're right

00:17:32.620 that there is definitely a trend of people marrying later and having children later. And probably these

00:17:40.880 big decisions are getting squished together and happening in the same period of time. And that's

00:17:46.820 probably increasing stress during those times. And it's also true that many of these big life

00:17:52.640 decisions are what I might call path dependent or they, you know, you can't, let's say, get divorced

00:17:59.400 unless you've gotten married. And so there are a number of other decisions where you can't engage in a

00:18:05.220 particular decision unless you've come from a previous decision. And so it's interesting also to think

00:18:10.540 about those paths. Yeah. It'd be interesting to look into that more. When you did these surveys,

00:18:14.700 were you able to see any differences amongst, you know, gender about what people thought were,

00:18:21.080 like men and women thought were a big life decision? Any difference there?

00:18:25.140 Yeah. I haven't spent a ton of time analyzing gender differences, but I certainly have noticed

00:18:29.820 a few patterns. So men are much more likely to mention career related decisions, such as starting a new

00:18:36.760 job, joining or leaving the military. Men are more likely to mention finance related decisions, such as

00:18:43.440 buying an investment. Men are also more likely to mention self-developmental decisions, such as

00:18:49.660 pursuing religion or engaging in a hobby or sport. On the flip side, women are more likely to mention

00:18:55.800 decisions related to family, such as having a child or making decisions for their child. Women are more 0.99

00:19:02.080 likely to mention relationship decisions, such as getting a divorce and even disclosing secret

00:19:07.660 information. And women are more likely to mention relocation decisions, such as moving to a new state.

00:19:14.740 It's interesting to reflect on what's causing these differences. Is it different life experiences or is

00:19:21.400 it different criteria for what's important in life? It's a little bit hard to tell from my data, but

00:19:28.180 certainly, for example, getting a divorce or having a child, this is a decision that both men and women

00:19:35.080 would be eligible to describe. And so it's interesting that it comes up more often for

00:19:40.600 women than men. So maybe that's a difference in the criteria. And yeah, it's hard to separate that 1.00

00:19:46.880 from what I've collected so far. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:19:51.480 And now back to the show. So when you ask people about the big decisions they've made

00:19:59.580 in their life, how do people reevaluate the decisions they made? Is it in a positive light?

00:20:05.480 Is it a negative light? Is there regret? When people just talk to you about those big life

00:20:11.140 decisions they have made, what do they tell you? Yeah. So for every decision that people describe

00:20:16.620 to me, I ask them to retrospectively evaluate those decisions from basically it was a great

00:20:21.860 decision to it was a bad decision or it was somewhere in between. So I guess the good news

00:20:26.940 is that most people are evaluating their past decisions positively. And that actually ties into

00:20:35.420 something in the academic literature called the positivity bias. And this is the observation that

00:20:42.520 those who are older tend to be focused more on positive things. So positive emotions,

00:20:48.540 positive memories. So that's something I guess for everyone to look forward to. It was interesting

00:20:54.060 to break down the types of decisions that were most likely to be described positively in retrospect

00:21:00.320 and compare those to the decisions that were least likely to be positively described. So those

00:21:07.440 decisions that were most highly evaluated were to pursue a philosophy or ideology.

00:21:12.000 to pursue religion or spirituality, to quit an addiction and even take social securities up

00:21:19.140 there. In contrast, the decisions that were least positively evaluated. So we, I guess,

00:21:25.300 could consider these to be the regretful decisions. These were, again, those self-destructive

00:21:31.240 type decisions. So beginning an addiction, committing a crime. There's also engaging the sexual activity

00:21:38.020 there and disclosing secret information. So I guess we can see a bit of a pattern in those responses.

00:21:46.280 I mean, I didn't conduct this research, but one of my favorite books on the topic was written by

00:21:51.560 Bronnie Ware. She's an Australian palliative carer. She wrote a book called The Top Five Regrets of the

00:21:57.980 Dying. She basically summarizes what she learned from working with those who are soon to depart.

00:22:05.560 The one that stood out for me is I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends. A lot of people who reach

00:22:11.720 these older ages, they just disconnected from so many of those who really understand them and accept

00:22:19.540 them as they are. So I think when we're thinking about these decisions and regretful decisions,

00:22:26.380 it's clear that the most enduring regrets relate to social relationships. You know, humans, we have a

00:22:33.500 biological need to belong and it's important to nurture those relationships. Another thing that stood

00:22:40.680 out from my research as well as conducted by others is that most of the big life regrets we have

00:22:47.440 relate to decisions that are inconsistent with our personal life rules and values. And I think it's

00:22:53.780 important to understand what your values are and then make decisions consistent with them. Because

00:22:59.980 even if you make a decision and things turn out poorly, at least you can have that knowledge that,

00:23:06.840 you know what, I made a decision that made sense at the time and was consistent with who I am as a person

00:23:13.300 or who I want to be as a person. And I guess finally, the biggest regrets tend to relate to things you

00:23:21.760 didn't do. And that might be because you were, you know, scared or maybe you were too busy working. And I think

00:23:29.260 it's easier to take a decision, engage in some kind of change, and then course correct if things aren't

00:23:36.620 working. And that's much more likely to happen than, you know, trying to, let's say, time travel and

00:23:43.080 pursue opportunities that you left behind.

00:23:45.720 So when you did the survey, you also asked people to predict future big life decisions,

00:23:51.240 you know, kind of like what decisions they'll make or when they'll happen. What did you find in those

00:23:57.260 questions?

00:23:58.400 Yeah, so I was really interested not just in what people's past decisions were, but also what they

00:24:03.680 thought were the future big life decisions. So I asked people this question in a number of ways.

00:24:10.520 So for example, one group, I asked them, as I did with everyone, tell me how many of your life's

00:24:15.020 biggest decisions, your 10 life's biggest decisions you've already made. But then I asked them to

00:24:20.240 estimate what their answer to that same question would have been 10 years ago. And also I asked them

00:24:26.340 to predict what their answer to that same question will be 10 years from now. And so with these three

00:24:32.480 data points, I can basically compare the predictions of, let's say, a 25 year old with the realities of

00:24:38.740 a 35 year old. And we can also compare the recollections of a 45 year old with the realities

00:24:45.360 of the 35 year old. And so we can do this with each age or each age group. So a couple of interesting

00:24:51.420 findings. So firstly, people overestimate how many of their life's biggest decisions they've already

00:24:56.920 made. So if we just look, for example, at the 45 year olds, they indicated that they had made three

00:25:03.560 of their life's biggest decisions when they were 10 years younger. So when they were 35, they thought

00:25:08.980 they'd made three big life decisions. However, when we asked the 35 year olds, how many of your life's

00:25:14.980 biggest decisions have you already made? They say 4.2. So 4.2 is higher than three. So that suggests that

00:25:21.740 there is some kind of overestimate happening there. And we see that same pattern for every age group.

00:25:25.860 We also see that people overestimate how many of their life's biggest decisions will happen in the

00:25:32.720 near future. So again, if we look at 35 year olds making predictions about how many of their big life

00:25:40.320 decisions they would have made by the time they're 45, they suggest it's about 8, 8.3. Whereas if we look

00:25:47.860 at what 45 year olds report, they say it's just 5.8 at age 45. So again, we can see that this

00:25:55.200 forecasting error exists and it's even stronger for those who are younger. So that's sort of some

00:26:02.900 difference in when big decisions are going to happen. We also can see prediction errors in the

00:26:09.660 types of decisions that are expected. So we can think about decisions that are over expected and

00:26:16.300 those that are under expected. So for example, younger people tend to over predict decisions such as

00:26:24.260 traveling and buying something or an investment as big life decisions. And it turns out that those

00:26:30.820 who are older, they don't mention things like traveling in their list. In contrast, those who

00:26:35.900 are younger tend to under predict things like starting a new job, getting a divorce store, ending a romantic

00:26:43.640 relationship or quitting a job. So these decisions tend to be ones that the younger people say aren't going

00:26:52.020 to happen very often. But those who are older say, yeah, that actually did happen much more often than

00:26:56.180 I expected. So I guess some important take-homes from this analysis. Firstly, people are really poor

00:27:03.000 at predicting when their big life decisions are going to happen. And it seems like people just find it

00:27:09.500 really hard to imagine any big life decision that's more than 10, maybe 15 years in the future.

00:27:14.920 And it also seems like the foresight that the younger people are lacking is potentially a problem because

00:27:25.200 were they able to see what's coming down the road, they would probably make some different decisions such as

00:27:32.200 quitting smoking or buying insurance or investing their savings or taking care of themselves better. So I think

00:27:40.160 this, you might call it a blindness is particularly problematic, but it's something that we can 0.52

00:27:45.940 improve if we think hard about what's actually coming down the road and look at those around us who

00:27:52.060 have had more experience than us. This is interesting. In your study or research as a psychologist, have

00:27:56.880 you found any tactics that work that can help people think, pretty young people think about their old

00:28:03.320 self, so that they do things that their old self will appreciate when they're 50, 60, 70 years old?

00:28:12.560 Yeah, this is a big question. How do you get people to make good decisions now for themselves 30 years down

00:28:18.560 the road? A lot of research actually has been done on retirement savings, because this is a classic

00:28:23.460 problem where the decisions that we make today are going to have significant financial impacts on our future

00:28:30.880 selves. And so there have been a number of studies that have attempted to basically increase the

00:28:36.500 connection that the present person feels about their future self, because often we don't think about

00:28:42.920 our future self or when we do, they may not feel that close to us. And so my favorite study was one in

00:28:51.460 which they took photographs of individuals, and then they presented age rendered images back to the

00:28:58.740 individual. So you would basically see a photograph of yourself, but now you were like 70 years old.

00:29:04.520 And in the study, they were trying to increase savings. And the way that they did this was

00:29:10.520 essentially they had a button on screen that you could drag left to right, which was indicating how

00:29:15.420 much savings you were going to put into retirement. And the age rendered face of yourself changed from

00:29:23.620 being happy to sad, dependent on what you did. So if you put in very little savings, then your future

00:29:29.600 self looked really sad. And if you put in a lot of savings now, then your future self looked quite

00:29:34.920 happy. And as you can guess, since I'm mentioning it, and you can probably envision what this experience

00:29:41.520 would look like, people felt much more connected to their future selves. And as a result, they were much

00:29:46.900 more likely to increase the rate of savings today. So that's one fun way of just thinking about how you

00:29:54.660 can increase the connection between your present self and your future self.

00:29:59.540 No, yeah, that's something to think about. We often think of ourselves as like a one continuous

00:30:03.720 person, and we are. But what you need or want now is probably going to be completely different from what

00:30:11.800 you need or want five years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years from now.

00:30:17.120 Yeah, I guess as a psychologist at Harvard, he's got, Dan Gilbert, he's got a theory. It's called the

00:30:23.700 end of history illusion. And basically, he asks people to describe how much they've changed in the

00:30:30.000 last decade, and then to predict how much they think they'll change in the next decade. And basically,

00:30:38.400 people suggest that they've changed a lot in the last decade. They've grown a lot. They've changed

00:30:43.700 their tastes and personality have changed, but they don't think they're going to change very much

00:30:48.460 in the future. And it seems like this point in time right now is sort of people's peak and their

00:30:56.920 final version of themselves. And that's just not true.

00:31:00.900 So when you did this research and did this survey, and you asked people about their big life decisions,

00:31:07.000 were you able to figure out which big decisions lead to long-term happiness and fulfillment?

00:31:13.880 Yeah. So I attempted to answer this question. So I asked people to complete a standard life

00:31:18.700 satisfaction questionnaire, which basically just asks people things like, how satisfied are you with

00:31:24.280 your life? And how close to ideal is your life? So it's not a measure of happiness in terms of how happy

00:31:33.340 you're feeling at the moment. It's a self-reflective life satisfaction question.

00:31:38.400 And so I was able to look for correlations between number of or different types of big life decisions

00:31:44.580 and who was more likely to report having a high life satisfaction.

00:31:50.700 So those who had high life satisfaction scores were much less likely to mention things like engaging in

00:31:59.180 self-harm, which makes sense. Having a family member move in was also turned out to be quite a

00:32:05.500 negative impact on life satisfaction. And then also interesting was getting medicine or treatment.

00:32:12.940 And so obviously this decision was mentioned by those who were having health problems.

00:32:16.980 The decisions that were significantly more likely to predict high life satisfaction were pursuing

00:32:24.060 religion and spirituality. And that's, you know, I've mentioned that one a number of times now that

00:32:29.040 comes up a lot. Buying a home. So having that sort of financial security seems to be a big one in just

00:32:36.480 generally having finances in order. It also seems like some big life decisions that seem really

00:32:44.500 important at the time may not be as big. And so in particular education related decisions,

00:32:51.660 they seem really big, really important. What university degree should I study?

00:32:56.240 But it turns out these sort of fade in importance over time. And one of the reasons is that I think

00:33:02.100 I've read, you know, we can expect five career changes in our lifetime. So many people's initial

00:33:07.760 degree at university just doesn't matter a decade or so on. So I think some of the take-homes from this

00:33:15.580 analysis is that firstly, the good news is that there's many paths to happiness. Most people,

00:33:21.660 if we look at the results to that life satisfaction scale, most people were fairly satisfied with

00:33:26.400 their life. And it was regardless of the unique composition of the big life decisions they'd made.

00:33:32.180 It's just because people are fairly happy. They like who they are. And it was their unique set of

00:33:37.580 decisions that got them to who they are today. So even though it seems at the time, like many of

00:33:45.680 these big life decisions are really going to have a huge impact on our life satisfaction and

00:33:51.240 happiness, you're probably going to end up fairly happy regardless of what happens. So for some,

00:33:57.740 that might be reassuring. Having said that, there are some big life decisions that are probably going

00:34:04.040 to decrease your life satisfaction. And these are the sort of self-destructive decisions such as

00:34:09.140 committing crime, maybe engaging in drugs and getting addicted. These tend to be decisions that are

00:34:15.720 not really thought through much at the time, but they really put one on a treacherous path that can

00:34:22.180 last for decades. And then finally, there are some big life decisions that seem to reliably predict a

00:34:28.800 higher life satisfaction. And the thing that's common among them is that they really involve taking

00:34:34.340 control of your life and pouring yourself into a particular pursuit or project, be it religion or

00:34:41.160 something else. And I think it's hard to sometimes make the time for these more self-developmental

00:34:48.000 decisions. But in the end, these tend to be the ones that may be most impactful on our happiness.

00:34:56.440 Yeah. I think that insight about college, young people, you think it's the most important thing,

00:35:01.260 but then you ask a 70-year-old and it probably won't even come up. I've seen that in my own life and

00:35:07.000 just the lives of friends. I went to law school and when you're in law school, the most important

00:35:12.160 thing is you have to get a good rank in your class. You got to get on law review because that's how

00:35:17.680 you're going to get a job, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I asked my friends, we're like 11, 12 years out

00:35:23.600 of law school. Does that even come up anymore? What your GPA was in law school? It hasn't come up

00:35:30.640 since I graduated. I mean, no one cares because now what matters is the reputation I've

00:35:36.900 built as a practicing attorney, not what I did as a law student. Exactly.

00:35:42.480 So when you did the survey, did you find out anything about practices or processes that people

00:35:51.300 who make good life decisions that are applicable to anybody? So basically, are there any tips that

00:35:58.240 you found that help us get better at making big life decisions? Yeah. So whenever I asked people to

00:36:03.900 tell me about their big life decisions, I also asked them to tell me about all of the factors

00:36:08.200 surrounding that decision. I wanted to know what was the process that they used so I could get to

00:36:13.280 this question that you're asking now, what makes a good big life decision? And there are a lot of

00:36:19.940 results here. So I'll try to pick out the ones that I think are most perhaps easy to implement.

00:36:25.840 So the decisions that were most favorably judged in retrospect, they tended to be the ones that

00:36:32.520 firstly involved a change as opposed to maintaining the status quo. And so often we're faced with this

00:36:38.040 decision. Should I just stick with my current job or should I make the change? And it seems like a

00:36:44.280 general good piece of advice is if you're kind of 50-50, unsure what to do, and you're thinking

00:36:49.800 about, you know, I should just flip a coin here. It seems like the right thing to do is to make the

00:36:53.840 change. Forget the coin, just go ahead and make the change. Another thing that turned out was that

00:36:59.900 using a more analytical approach as opposed to a more intuitive approach tended to be associated with

00:37:06.800 better decisions, at least in retrospect. So analytics means people took the time, they did

00:37:12.580 research, they asked people, they got advice, they weighed up their options, as opposed to using the

00:37:18.100 more intuitive approach, which was just to sort of go with a gut feeling. So I definitely recommend

00:37:22.980 using a more analytical approach, which often includes spending more time before making a

00:37:28.480 decision. So some of those more self-destructive decisions, often the amount of time thought was

00:37:34.360 like a few seconds, which is in comparison to some of the more self-developmental decisions,

00:37:39.120 which I've described as being hugely impactful on life satisfaction. People spent years in some

00:37:45.300 cases thinking about those decisions before actually pursuing them. Another factor that was really

00:37:50.740 important was confidence. How confident are you in your decision at the time? And often this confidence

00:37:56.100 is derived from having thought through the options, having reflected on your own goals and then

00:38:04.420 committing to a decision. So I think that's important. And finally, decision makers who felt less obligated

00:38:12.620 to make a decision at the time. So sometimes we feel cornered to make a decision because of obligation

00:38:18.800 from family or expectations of society. And that tends to be a recipe for disaster. So attempting as

00:38:26.520 much as you can to avoid the sense of obligation and choosing the option that you think is best for

00:38:32.180 you. So overall, I think the take-homes for how to make good life decisions, firstly, requires

00:38:39.020 understanding yourself. So what are your goals? What are your values? How are you going to really know

00:38:44.560 what's a good decision unless you have these as your reference point? So that's the first step.

00:38:50.640 I think it's also important to recognize that a good decision is not just about ending up with a 0.79

00:38:56.160 good outcome, but it's about having a good process to begin with. Because in most cases, you can't

00:39:01.920 control the outcome. There's too many random elements, but you can control the process. And so having a

00:39:09.060 process where you are able to reflect on your options, get advice from other people, I think is

00:39:14.700 really important and certainly a good way to insulate yourself from feelings of regret later on.

00:39:21.480 And finally, there's a lot of experience out there. Although I've mentioned big life decisions are rare,

00:39:28.220 they're actually quite common in society. And so you might get married once in your life,

00:39:33.140 but getting married is really common. And so there's a lot of wisdom that can be learned from the

00:39:38.620 experience of others. And so I think it's important to seek out that wisdom.

00:39:42.420 No. And for people, listeners who are looking for a process to help them make better

00:39:46.860 life decisions, we've had some guests on the podcast in the past. You might want to check out,

00:39:51.700 we've had Annie Duke on the podcast. She's written a book, How to Decide Simple Tools for Making Better

00:39:56.740 Choices. A lot of neat tools there. And then the other one is Stephen Johnson. He wrote a book about,

00:40:02.620 it's called Farsighted, How to Make the Decisions That Matter the Most. And a lot of mental models that you can use

00:40:07.860 to make the decisions. A lot of it's just trying to figure out different possibilities, right? That's

00:40:12.540 when you're making a decision. Like you said, life decisions are so complex because they can go down

00:40:17.140 these different pathways. And so their whole idea is to help you get a better idea of the different

00:40:21.780 possibilities and then decide which one's the best out of all the options.

00:40:26.640 Yeah, those are great books. Definitely. I recommend those.

00:40:29.060 So where do you see this research going? Where else would you like to do with this research on big

00:40:33.780 life decisions? Well, I guess at this point, I've focused on Americans and there's certainly going 0.99

00:40:40.880 to be cultural differences. So it'd be really interesting to see how different cultures and

00:40:46.220 those from different countries, you know, arrange their big decisions and maybe they've got even

00:40:50.860 different criteria. So one of the things that I've done is build a website. It's called 10biggestdecisions.com.

00:40:58.160 And I've been encouraging people to go to that website. They can explore the data,

00:41:02.660 but they can also complete the survey and they can then compare their results with others. And so

00:41:07.420 tens of thousands of people have filled that in at this point. And so I'm starting to create a

00:41:12.940 database there of different cultural results. I haven't stopped to look at the data yet, but

00:41:18.160 that's certainly one interesting direction. And I mean, one of my other goals is really to try to

00:41:23.480 put together a book that summarizes some of the wisdom here and maybe walks people through their 10

00:41:30.860 biggest life decisions summarizing what I've learned from conducting this research.

00:41:36.520 So that's the thing. That's the big takeaway. People, like on average, people make 10 big life

00:41:40.620 decisions. Yeah. When you freely ask people to just list down the number of big life decisions or big

00:41:47.940 life events, you get a range like three to 20. And so 10 seems to be in that sweet spot of how many big

00:41:56.640 life decisions they do make. Well, Adrian, where can people go to learn more about the work and maybe

00:42:01.040 take part in that survey you talked about? Yeah. So 10biggestdecisions.com and feel free to explore the

00:42:06.740 data and complete the survey. And if you have any questions about it, feel free to contact me. My

00:42:12.640 details are on the website. All right, Adrian, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:42:16.360 Thank you very much.

00:42:18.080 My guest is Dr. Adrian Camilleri. He is the founder of the Biggest Life Decisions Project. You can learn

00:42:22.920 more information about this project at 10biggestdecisions.com. Also check out our show

00:42:27.480 notes at aom.is slash 10 decisions where you can find links to resources where you delve deeper into

00:42:31.700 this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at

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The Art of Manliness - September 15, 2021

Life's 10 Biggest Decisions

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