Life's 10 Biggest Decisions
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode, psychologist Dr. Adrian Camilleri talks about the criteria that define a big life decision, the most common ones people make, and which of these decisions people rank as being the most important. We then talk about the numbers and types of big life decisions people typically make in each decade of their lives, and how these decisions tend to be front-loaded in your 20s, but you'll still have a surprising number to make in your later years too.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Now, how many
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of your life's 10 biggest decisions have you already made? My guest today, psychologist,
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Dr. Adrian Camilleri would often ask this question to friends and family and found that it generated
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a lot of interesting conversation. It also generated a lot of his own thoughts, which
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made him want to dive more deeply into it and empirically study it and other related questions
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as well. The result was the biggest life decisions project, which we'll be talking about on the show
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today. Adrian first explains the criteria that define a big life decision, the most common ones
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people make, and which of these decisions people rank as being the most important. We then talk
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about the numbers and types of big life decisions people typically make in each decade of their lives
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and how these decisions tend to be front-loaded in your 20s, but you'll still have a surprising number
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to make in your later years too. Adrian shares which decisions people tend to look back on
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positively and are correlated with higher life satisfaction and which tend to lead to poor
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outcomes and regret. We also get in the way people can both underestimate and overestimate
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the importance of some decisions before ending with what Adrian has learned by working on the
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project about how to make good life decisions. After the show's over, check out our show notes
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at aom.is slash 10 decisions. Adrian Camilleri, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Brett.
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So you are a consumer psychologist, but you've been doing some research on big life decisions
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that people make. I'm curious, how did you get started researching big life decisions? How is
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this connected to your work as a consumer psychologist? Well, as a psychologist, I'm really
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interested in how people make decisions. Now, most of the decisions that I tend to study are those that
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you might call small, such as how to choose different options on a menu. But a few years ago,
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I found myself having to make a number of very large decisions. So I was deciding whether to
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get married to my longtime girlfriend. I was living in the US at the time, and I had to decide what job
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to take and whether it was going to be in the US or back home in Australia. And then a little bit
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after that, I was deciding whether or not to buy a house and have children. So these were so much more
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important than the decision about what to choose off a menu. And most of my research wasn't really
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helpful in making these bigger life decisions. And when I looked at the existing literature,
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I didn't find much to help me there either. So I thought, there seems to be a bit of a gap here.
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So that's when I decided to start this big life decisions project. And it really began by asking
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people a pretty simple question, which was, how many of your life's 10 biggest decisions have you
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already made? And that's a question that really gets the conversation going. So from that point forward,
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I decided to take a little bit of a more scientific approach and get people's answers to that question
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and related questions. Okay. So let's talk definitions. In your research, how are you defining
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a big life decision? My working definition of a big life decision at the start of this project was
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one in which you explicitly are making a choice between two or perhaps more options, knowing that
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the outcome is going to have a significant, possibly long-term impact on how you and maybe others live.
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So that's how I started thinking about, but I really wanted to know what others thought the definition
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was. So I've asked hundreds of people to tell me what their definition is. And I've taken those responses
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and I've hired people to read through those responses independent of me to try to synthesize what are
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the core features of a big decision. And we've come up with nine or 10. So first is the decisions
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rarely made. So for example, getting married is a typical big life decision. And most people do that
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once, maybe twice. Decision involves a lot of thinking. And because it's part of the definition,
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people know they're making a big decision at the time. So they often spend a lot of time thinking
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about it. The decision outcomes are uncertain. The decision often challenges our morals or values.
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So for example, the decision to get an abortion is often a really big one. And that often challenges
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people. The decision often requires significant investment of resources. So here I'm thinking about
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things like buying a house. The decision rules out many other options. So if you pursue one career,
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for example, you're ruling out every other career, big decisions tend to impact multiple areas of your
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life, as well as multiple people in your life. They have long-term consequences. And big decisions
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tend to be difficult to take back or undo. Gotcha. So those are the ideas of what makes a big life
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decision a big life decision. When you looked at the research that you've done, these surveys you've done,
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what are the most common big life decisions that people make?
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Yes. I've asked hundreds of people to tell me about their biggest life decisions. And they were
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basically open text boxes where people could tell me anything they wanted to. And I had some really
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fascinating stories come up, but it was a mess initially. So I was really trying to come up with
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some kind of structure. In the end, I came up with a structure that had nine decision categories.
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And then within those 58 different decision types. So the decision categories are, the first one is
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career-related big decisions. And the most common of these is to start a new job. There's the education
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related decisions. And the most common here is to pursue a degree. There are family-related decisions.
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And the most common one here is to have a child. There are finance-related decisions. The most common
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being buying a home. We have relationship-related decisions. And the most common one here is
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getting married. There are relocation-related decisions. The most common being to move to a new
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state. There are self-destruction-type decisions. These are less common, but the most common among them is to
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begin an addiction. And then we have the self-developmental decisions. Again, these are relatively less
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common, but they include things like pursuing a religion or engaging in travel or holiday.
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So out of that list, the most common decisions were to start a new job, get married, and pursue a degree.
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And there were also some interesting differences in terms of who you asked. And by that, I mean,
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the age of the person. So decisions that were made by those who were younger or described by those who
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were younger tended to focus more on things like education. Whereas those who are older,
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they tended to more often describe things like getting divorced and retiring.
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Gotcha. I mean, we'll talk about how decisions change over the life course of a person.
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So you just list off the most common decisions. So it's basically education, job, family, like marriage,
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have kids. When you asked people and you did these surveys, did you ask them what they felt was
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the most important decision out of all the major life decisions they made?
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Yeah, I did. So I'd ask people to tell me about their 10 biggest life decisions so far. But then
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I asked them, can you please rank those decisions from most to least important? And what we find is
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that at the top of the list, the decision that's ranked as the most important is ending a life. And this
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was often in the form of an abortion. And it wasn't very common, but when it was mentioned,
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more than 50% of those who mentioned it put it right at the top of the list. And other decisions
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that were put right at the top of the list were engaging in self-harm, getting married, having a
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child and pursuing religion and spirituality. So again, it's interesting to look at this list because
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as I said, ending a life was fairly rare, but getting married was very common. And about half
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of those who mentioned getting married, again, put it at the top or second on their list. So we can
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think about sort of decisions in two dimensions. One is how common are they? And also how important are
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they when they happen? And so I think if you were to ask me, what is really the biggest decision in
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life? It'd be a combination of most common and also most important. And that would be getting
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married and then having a child. But then we have these other relatively uncommon decisions,
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but when they're faced, they're often monumental. And I think, you know, when I was stepping back,
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trying to like summarize what are these decisions representing? Is there a further abstraction I can
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make? And it seemed like people were trying to solve kind of four basic questions in life. And
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that was, you know, what kind of education should I be getting? How should I be earning a living?
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Where should I put down roots? And perhaps most important, who should I put down those roots with?
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I'm curious about this idea of like starting like self-harm. Do people consider that a decision?
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Because I feel like oftentimes we think of like addiction or, you know, doing self-harm,
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whether that's, I don't know, cutting yourself or something like that.
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People don't really think like, I purposely thought about doing this. It just sort of
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happens. I'm curious about that dynamic of like, is that really a decision?
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Well, I guess it's up. I can't tell whether it's a decision. They tell me it was a decision.
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And I should also point out that we're, I guess, getting in the sample of those who engaged in
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self-harm and weren't successful in many cases in committing suicide, because obviously we don't get those
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responses. So I think for many people, it was a decision. And for example,
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cutting, it might be, you know, not an attempt to commit suicide, but maybe an attempt to get
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attention and say, look, I'm in trouble here. I need help. And so I don't think many of them spent
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a lot of time thinking about the decision before they made it. And we might talk later on about
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which decisions people spent a lot of time thinking about versus those that they did not
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spend much time thinking about. And certainly the self-destruction type decisions, such as engaging in
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self-harm, committing a crime. These are decisions that people didn't spend very much time thinking
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When you talked to people about big decisions, did things come up about like what to do with
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an elderly parent who's, you know, got some sort of terminal disease or has Alzheimer's? Did that
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Yes. So the category of ending a life included potentially people who were on life support
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and the decision maker was responsible for deciding what happened there. And one of the
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other categories was choosing for another person. And often that was for a child, but sometimes it was
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for a parent. And another decision was seeking medical treatment. And so sometimes that was for the
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individual. Maybe let's say they had cancer and they've got different options on how to seek
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treatment. But that could also be for a loved one.
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Let's talk about when these decisions happen. So you mentioned earlier, there are differences
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when people say they make big life decisions. When you're younger, typically education's on your mind
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and you think that's a big life decision. What else are the differences across the life spectrum
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Yeah. So I asked people that question I started with initially, which is how many of your life's 10
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biggest decisions do you think you've already made? And it's a bit of a tricky question because
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it requires you to kind of cycle forward in life and basically figure out, okay, when am I going to die
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on that day? Hopefully many years from now, looking back on my life, how many of my 10 biggest life
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decisions have I already made in the year 2021? But I did ask that question. I get some sensible
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answers back. So those in their 20s, they say they've made about three, three and a half of their
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10 biggest life decisions. Those in their 30s say they've made about four and a half. Those in their
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40s say about five. Those in their 50s, about five and a half. Those in their 60s, about six and a half.
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And those in their 70s, about seven. So there is this general increase, but it is interesting that it
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kind of plateaus. And even those who are in their 70s, they think they've still got three big life
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decisions lying ahead of them. So that's interesting. When we look at the age period at which most of
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these decisions that have been made in the past were made, we see that it's something called the
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reminiscence bump. And it actually shows that most of the memories and the decisions that people recall,
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even for those who are 50, 60, 70 year old, they tend to be during the period of 20 to 29 years old.
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So for every age group, most of the decisions were for the period of 20 to 29. And I guess that makes
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sense. This tends to be the period where people really establish themselves. They get a degree,
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maybe they start a career, they meet their life partner, they often buy a house. So
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this is a fundamental period in life. And this tends to be the time where most of the memories
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come from as well. I can also sort of break down the decisions in terms of those that tended to be
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made earlier in life versus those that tend to be made later in life. So as you mentioned, it's the
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education related decisions that tended to be made earlier in life, such as what university to go to,
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what major to follow. There's also the self-destruction type decisions made earlier in
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life. So beginning an addiction, committing crime, doing some silly things. And also we see things
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like joining the military for those who are older, that happened when they were in their 20s.
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And then the decisions that tend to be made later in life, these were things wouldn't surprise you,
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such as retiring, making a will, taking social security, selling a home, closing down a business.
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So I think the take-homes, I guess, are that big life decisions are front-loaded. You're most
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likely to make them between ages of say 16 and 35. But although front-loaded, big decisions are
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happening throughout one's life. So you may think at age, let's say 35, which is approximately where I'm
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at, with a degree, you've got a job, a home, a spouse, child. It seems like most of my big life
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decisions have already been made, but I'm probably wrong. And you are too, if you're thinking the same
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thing, because life seems to have a way of constantly throwing curveballs. So in your future,
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there may be postgraduate degrees and career changes, renovations, remarriages, even more kids.
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And I guess, as I mentioned, even those who were 70, pushing 80 years old, they still thought that
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there were a number of big life decisions lurking around the corner. And the data that I've collected
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seems to suggest that they're probably correct. Yeah. If I look at my own experience, I feel like
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I made most of my big life decisions in that time period, like 20 to 29. And it's interesting,
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that's when I journaled a lot. I used to be a journaler and I don't, I haven't journaled in a
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long time. And it's, I think it's because like, I don't have any big decisions to make, right? It's
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mostly my life for like the past, I don't know, six years has been pretty much the same. Right.
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So I've had kids, married, house, jobs, all right, school's done. But I mean, who knows, that could,
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that could change any moment. Like you said, I could, you know, job could go
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kaplunk or someone could get sick in your family. You could get a sickness and you're
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forced to make a big life decision that you didn't even think you'd have to make.
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Yeah. I mean, I, like you also wrote a journal when I was in my early twenties and have not done
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that for a long time. And sort of the period in life that we're at now, maybe thirties, forties,
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this is a high pressure time because we're in the middle of careers, paying off mortgages. We've got
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younger children. We've also got older parents that we need to take care of.
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So it's, it's, it's a really busy time. If you look at the judgments of happiness,
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this tends to be the lowest period for most people because it's so stressful,
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but I think I can assure you there will be some big life decisions ahead of you.
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I don't know if you looked at this, but one thing I thought of as you were talking was
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the trend in people marrying later and how this is maybe crammed life decisions together
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that they otherwise wouldn't, would have been more spaced out if they'd gotten married earlier.
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One thing I've heard is, you know, as you get married later, you know, you have to make that
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decision of like to have kids a lot sooner than maybe than you would if you were, you got married
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if you're 24. But if you're getting married when you're 37, you might have to make that decision
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really fast. And then you have a kid, let's say you have a kid. Then you have, you have the challenge,
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like you have the challenge of making decisions for your kids, but then you also have to think,
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well, man, I got my parents, they've, they're older, they've got issues. And now you have this
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situation where you have people making a lot of big life decisions. They otherwise would have been
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more spaced out if they had made other life decisions earlier. Does that make sense?
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Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I looked or have too many insights from my data on this, but you're right
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that there is definitely a trend of people marrying later and having children later. And probably these
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big decisions are getting squished together and happening in the same period of time. And that's
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probably increasing stress during those times. And it's also true that many of these big life
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decisions are what I might call path dependent or they, you know, you can't, let's say, get divorced
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unless you've gotten married. And so there are a number of other decisions where you can't engage in a
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particular decision unless you've come from a previous decision. And so it's interesting also to think
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about those paths. Yeah. It'd be interesting to look into that more. When you did these surveys,
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were you able to see any differences amongst, you know, gender about what people thought were,
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like men and women thought were a big life decision? Any difference there?
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Yeah. I haven't spent a ton of time analyzing gender differences, but I certainly have noticed
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a few patterns. So men are much more likely to mention career related decisions, such as starting a new
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job, joining or leaving the military. Men are more likely to mention finance related decisions, such as
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buying an investment. Men are also more likely to mention self-developmental decisions, such as
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pursuing religion or engaging in a hobby or sport. On the flip side, women are more likely to mention
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decisions related to family, such as having a child or making decisions for their child. Women are more
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likely to mention relationship decisions, such as getting a divorce and even disclosing secret
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information. And women are more likely to mention relocation decisions, such as moving to a new state.
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It's interesting to reflect on what's causing these differences. Is it different life experiences or is
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it different criteria for what's important in life? It's a little bit hard to tell from my data, but
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certainly, for example, getting a divorce or having a child, this is a decision that both men and women
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would be eligible to describe. And so it's interesting that it comes up more often for
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women than men. So maybe that's a difference in the criteria. And yeah, it's hard to separate that
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from what I've collected so far. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
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And now back to the show. So when you ask people about the big decisions they've made
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in their life, how do people reevaluate the decisions they made? Is it in a positive light?
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Is it a negative light? Is there regret? When people just talk to you about those big life
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decisions they have made, what do they tell you? Yeah. So for every decision that people describe
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to me, I ask them to retrospectively evaluate those decisions from basically it was a great
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decision to it was a bad decision or it was somewhere in between. So I guess the good news
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is that most people are evaluating their past decisions positively. And that actually ties into
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something in the academic literature called the positivity bias. And this is the observation that
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those who are older tend to be focused more on positive things. So positive emotions,
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positive memories. So that's something I guess for everyone to look forward to. It was interesting
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to break down the types of decisions that were most likely to be described positively in retrospect
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and compare those to the decisions that were least likely to be positively described. So those
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decisions that were most highly evaluated were to pursue a philosophy or ideology.
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to pursue religion or spirituality, to quit an addiction and even take social securities up
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there. In contrast, the decisions that were least positively evaluated. So we, I guess,
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could consider these to be the regretful decisions. These were, again, those self-destructive
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type decisions. So beginning an addiction, committing a crime. There's also engaging the sexual activity
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there and disclosing secret information. So I guess we can see a bit of a pattern in those responses.
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I mean, I didn't conduct this research, but one of my favorite books on the topic was written by
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Bronnie Ware. She's an Australian palliative carer. She wrote a book called The Top Five Regrets of the
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Dying. She basically summarizes what she learned from working with those who are soon to depart.
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The one that stood out for me is I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends. A lot of people who reach
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these older ages, they just disconnected from so many of those who really understand them and accept
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them as they are. So I think when we're thinking about these decisions and regretful decisions,
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it's clear that the most enduring regrets relate to social relationships. You know, humans, we have a
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biological need to belong and it's important to nurture those relationships. Another thing that stood
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out from my research as well as conducted by others is that most of the big life regrets we have
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relate to decisions that are inconsistent with our personal life rules and values. And I think it's
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important to understand what your values are and then make decisions consistent with them. Because
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even if you make a decision and things turn out poorly, at least you can have that knowledge that,
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you know what, I made a decision that made sense at the time and was consistent with who I am as a person
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or who I want to be as a person. And I guess finally, the biggest regrets tend to relate to things you
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didn't do. And that might be because you were, you know, scared or maybe you were too busy working. And I think
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it's easier to take a decision, engage in some kind of change, and then course correct if things aren't
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working. And that's much more likely to happen than, you know, trying to, let's say, time travel and
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So when you did the survey, you also asked people to predict future big life decisions,
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you know, kind of like what decisions they'll make or when they'll happen. What did you find in those
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Yeah, so I was really interested not just in what people's past decisions were, but also what they
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thought were the future big life decisions. So I asked people this question in a number of ways.
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So for example, one group, I asked them, as I did with everyone, tell me how many of your life's
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biggest decisions, your 10 life's biggest decisions you've already made. But then I asked them to
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estimate what their answer to that same question would have been 10 years ago. And also I asked them
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to predict what their answer to that same question will be 10 years from now. And so with these three
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data points, I can basically compare the predictions of, let's say, a 25 year old with the realities of
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a 35 year old. And we can also compare the recollections of a 45 year old with the realities
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of the 35 year old. And so we can do this with each age or each age group. So a couple of interesting
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findings. So firstly, people overestimate how many of their life's biggest decisions they've already
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made. So if we just look, for example, at the 45 year olds, they indicated that they had made three
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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
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
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
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.
00:42:18.080
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
00:42:42.680
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00:43:13.320
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