In 2018 the World Health Organization suggested that depression was the leading cause of disability in the world. Evidence suggests that rates of depression have been increasing in all modern societies in recent years and that this is particularly true among young adults. It has been suggested that increases in depression are in part due to the new burden of selfhood. What is this new burden? Our ancestors had fewer options and, in a way, this made life simpler. Today young people are flooded with choices and social comparison. Choice confusion, choice fatigue, higher expectations, stress, dissatisfaction and self-blame for feelings of regret are all making today’s move to adulthood more psychologically challenging. (see Schwartz – Self-determination: The tyranny of freedom. Schwartz, Barry American Psychologist, Vol 55(1), Jan 2000, 79-88).
The only time when more options seem to increase satisfaction is when we clearly know what we want and can sort through the choices fairly easily. The worst situation is to have many options and have no earthly idea how to choose. This is the situation many of us face in deciding on college majors, choosing early career paths and many other situations in life where there is great ambiguity.
Advice on three fronts can help here.
1. Discern your relative value hierarchy more clearly.
Making good decisions in life requires that we understand how the costs and benefits associated with any action fit our values and preferences. It is impossible to make good decisions if you are unable to understand your hierarchy of values – what is most important to you and what is least important to you. For example, do you want to chase money, affiliation, fame, aesthetics, autonomy, personal growth? Knowing your relative ranking on these and other basic values help you make a decision that will prove gratifying. So many of us do not understand our values clearly and so we are easily distracted by what others are chasing and are surprised that it leads to disappointment.
2. Learn to navigate ambiguity.
So often we are faced with choices where it is not at all clear what each path will lead to. Applying principles of design thinking can help here. Design thinkers deal with ambiguity by engaging in more experimentation so as to learn from experience what you like and do not like. There are many situations in life where you cannot think your way to the best decision, you have to experience your way. Design thinking techniques help you understand how to do this by developing hypotheses or potential insights and designing tests it to see if they are true. (So for example, one of my MBA students wanted to leave her job is accounting, get a Ph.D. in psychology and go into HR. She had worked for an insurance company for many years and had great credibility. Instead of quitting her job she got a transfer into HR at the insurance company to see if she would really like it. This transfer was an experiment that would tell her more concretely whether this path had promise.
3. Learn to become an essentialist.
One of the reasons that so many options create paralysis and stress is that we fall into the trap of all differences matter. Often this is not true. Most options will satisfy our needs and obsessing over all of them will not improve outcomes and may increase stress, regret, and dissatisfaction. Develop a practice of only spending time on things that REALLY matter. The rest is noise and will only complicate our lives. Greg McKeown expresses this as “the disciplined pursuit of less.”2
Zijian
7 Jul 2020Is there any other ways to deal with ambiguity when one in a scenario that there is no room for experimentation?
admin
9 Jul 2020yes, scenario planning
Margaret
8 Jul 2020I would like to discuss the idea of becoming an “essentialist” in class. This reminds me of Steven Covey’s assertion in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – when he discusses the matrix if what is important and urgent.. I would like to improve my prioritization skills based on what is most important – not solely urgent. How can essentialism fit into this?
admin
9 Jul 2020yes, lets talk about this…can you come to the conversation with a point of view on how to do this; a method?
Cristian
8 Jul 2020It is very interesting how we forget to look into ourselves to determine our own happiness and we go down the rabbit hole of comparing our journey to others and how easy we beat ourselves because we are not where other people are. With that being said, how can we navigate the fine line of thinking that we know what we want and really getting what we want, considering different time periods of a lifetime and how those priorities evolve?
Marissa
9 Jul 2020“We fall into the trap of all differences matter. Often this is not true”. i thought this was such an important takeaway from the above post. I have younger cousins who are going into college and stressing about their majors and minors before they’ve attended their first course because they feel that a wrong decision can set them off down the wrong path.I think part of this is understanding your values and motives, but it’s also important to understand that our values aren’t constant. Values change as we mature; what’s important at age 18 might not matter as much at age 30. We need to accept that sometimes it’s necessary to ‘course correct’, without anxiety or blame.
admin
9 Jul 2020brilliant….sounds like those younger cousins could use some advice from the older wiser cousin!
Paul
9 Jul 2020Not knowing what you want can make you indecisive. Even with choices available, you can come complacent and waste time. It’s important to understand this so when opportunity presents itself, you know it’s time to strike.
admin
9 Jul 2020great point Paul…I think we sometimes focus on action and not the preparation that leads to action.
Hayley
9 Jul 2020When it comes to work and school, people are facing enormous challenges, including high expectations and stress. People want to over-deliver and show their worth to their employer. When people prioritize their work, then their well-being can start to suffer. I do believe that people need to recognize that work shouldn’t always be your priority. Especially during this virtual work environment, people should maintain a work-life balance.
admin
9 Jul 2020great insight…to have a good life you must balance the chase between what you want and what others want. Chasing either one to the exclusion of the other will lead to bad outcomes. Easier said than done though, right?
Nicholas Alonso
9 Jul 2020Depression and anxiety is a hot topic, as you mentioned more and more of the younger generation is impacted by this mental illness day after day. While I don’t think it is a cure-all of mental illness, I think the ideas of discerning relative value, ambiguity, and becoming an essentially can be pivotal in one’s growth away from that mindset.
admin
9 Jul 2020I agree
Anonymous
9 Jul 2020Again, this topic called to mind the anxiety I faced when trying to decide between an internship offer in France and one in China, when both were very different but perfectly good options. Choosing one good option meant forgoing another good option (the second part being all I could focus on) and this was an excruciating decision to make with limited information and much ambiguity about the future. In that situation, I could have benefited from “essentialist” thinking (not over-analyzing every small detail about both opportunities) but that is much easier said than done; essentialist thinking probably always seems rational in hindsight, but in the moment, it probably feels careless. The concept of design thinking is interesting, and probably can be implemented in an MBA program (if you think you might want to switch careers, you can take a course related to another career path that might be of interest). Lastly, social comparison (made even more prevalent in our society thanks to social media) is probably one of the biggest contributors to anxiety and depression today. Despite my best efforts, I occasionally find myself seeing what I perceive as others’ happiness and success on social media, and wonder if I’m “happy enough” or “successful enough,” or if I should be doing more, etc.
admin
9 Jul 2020The torture of that choice developed you. The Facebook generation problem. Everyone paying attention to others self-presentation bias
Melissa
9 Jul 2020The example of your MBA student wanting to transition from an accountant to HR really resonated with me. There are so many people that follow a specific career path in my industry and it is almost expected that you follow the same path that your manager did. If you are interested in switching to a new role within your company, what is the best way to broach that subject without making it seem like you are unhappy in your current role and want to leave?
admin
10 Jul 20201) find a place that you can add more value to your company and help them see it as a gain not a loss
2) feel out the new spots subtlely until you have a spot and know how to sell yourself as “more value-added”
3) there will be risk, embrace it. You cannot leap from one trapeze to another without letting go and this entails some risk. Not sure there is a way to find your sweet spot with zero risk. Just focus on proper and reasonable risk management and then leap!
Holly
10 Jul 2020The “All differences matter” statement really stuck with me because I can get in my head while making a decision for that very reason. I had never thought about how we have so many more choices and options today than others did in the past until viewing these blogs, and it made me realize that I struggle too much with making decisions, and that I really need to adhere to these three pieces of advice if I want to become a more decisive person and succeed in a manager role, which I am striving for in my career.