Choicecraft: The Art of Making Up Your Mind: Recent Episodes

Chris Mills

A podcast for indecisive people. Decision-making strategies for difficult choices and everyday dilemmas. Follow along with Chris as he asks experts how to become more decisive, and guests share stories about their most difficult choices.

Bill Boulden, fractional CTO and musician, shares advice on deciding whether to pursue your business or app ideas.

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Kurt Nelson is the cohost of the Behavioral Grooves podcast. He is also a sought-after consultant, speaker and recognized leader in human motivation and behavior change. For over 20 years, Kurt has worked with global companies to apply behavioral science principles to drive change in their organizations.

For his day job, Kurt is the Founder and Lead Behavioral Scientist at The Lantern Group, a communication and behavioral change agency that works with Fortune 500 companies. All of his work focuses on understanding ways to positively influence how people behave.

On this episode, Kurt and Chris talk about careers, incentives, and business incentives for employees.

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Jeanette Chasworth has been intrigued by color and energy for 25 years and created a design business that matches the energy of the client to the energy of the home creating a home that "hugs them every time they walk through the door." Color is all around us and affects us in many ways. On this episode, Jeanette shares tips for choosing the colors for your home, office, and wardrobe that will help you become more decisive. Learn how to choose the right color for your personality and the type of decision you're making.

Learn more about Jeanette Chasworth, The Color Whisperer, at www.thecolorwhisperer.com.

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Arehn McCarty has spent her life exploring the balance of science and spirituality. For over 30 years, she has helped people learn to co-create richer more fulfilling lives with a power greater than themselves. She is a living example of the manifestation principles she teaches. In 2019, to avoid being sad empty nesters, she and her husband, Jim, spent a “midlife gap year” traveling off- grid in a teardrop trailer seeing the wild places of North America. In 2021 she, was the heaviest she had ever been and using decision, effort and visualization she lost 30 pounds and kept it off. In 2022 she and Jim found and purchased their dream home, a lodge on 13 acres of old growth forest at the base of Mt. Hood. In 2023 she and Jim are celebrating 30 years of being best friends as well as being married. Along the way, following her Inner Guidance she discovered keys to manifestation and created a magnificent journey. Arehn is a certified Life Mastery Coach, an ordained New Thought minister and life member of INTA, has a BA in Environmental Education and Botany, is a certified Waldorf and Spacial Dynamics teacher, mother of two amazing men, and wife of 29 years.

Learn more at https://www.soulprintjourneys.com.

You can also find Arehn on YouTube and Instagram.

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Daniel Gray is a Legacy Life Coach from the Midwest United States. His mission is to help people build and share their stories whether it’s rewriting the traumas of their pasts into superpowers or breaking through the stagnation that people have found in their life’s. Daniel believes that everyone has a choice in the actions they take in life. In this episode, we talk about divorce, suicide, and how to take control of how you see yourself, so that you can take control of your life choices.

The best place to learn more about Daniel is his instagram, @danielgray.llc.

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Sean Cantley is a soldier, father, and cohost on The Terrible Tirades podcast. He shares advice on how to make decisions, when your choices will impact other people's lives and wellbeing. It's a great conversation on leadership, decision-making, and life in the military.

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Steve Center is a psychologist, therapist, and the host of Lonely Guy with a Book and Theories of Adulting. On this episode, he talks about 8 choices you make (or that are made for you) that define your progress through life. These choices help determine whether you're decisive, confident, and happy, or whether you get stuck.

To learn more about Steve, follow him on Twitter @SteveCenter5 or check out Lonely Guy with a Book here.

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Money mindset coach Ranger Kielak talks about how to get help making better financial decisions, and answers Chris's questions about a tough situation with his car.

You can learn more about Ranger o Instagram at @withinrange_coaching or on his website withinrangecoaching.com

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Rhonda Simmons is a life coach and the founder of The Simmons Empowerment Foundation. On this episode, she and Chris talk about how to recognize when you’re being called to do something, and how a life coach can help you become more decisive or make difficult decisions.

Learn more about Rhonda and TSEF at:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/rhonda-simmons-killeen-tx/1053430

https://www.noomii.com/users/rhonda-simmons

https://tsefi.org

Rhonda also has a podcast at:

https://www.amazon.com/Empowered-Heart-to/dp/B09X56VK9J

Transcript

This transcript was generated by Descript and may contain numerous inaccuracies.

Welcome to the Super Decider Podcast. You may have noticed that we now have new intro music. I want to shout out Sunshine Kids and G on Fiver for recording that for me. It's an original composition and it's one that I hope to keep using in the future. We're gonna have a better intro though, coming up soon.

I'm going to hire someone on Fiverr to record their voice instead of mine. So this podcast is getting better and better every time we do it.

With that said, let's get started.

Okay, so what is intuition?

If you have a big decision to make, you've asked around, you've talked to friends, and I bet someone has told you to "follow your heart." Or they've told you to "follow your instinct," "follow your gut," or "follow your intuition."

But what does that mean? And is that advice any good?

In this episode, I asked my little sister, Hannah, and a friend of mine Naga, about intuition, what it is, and how they use it. I wanted to ask this question because I don't think that I have a strong sense of intuition. That's one of the reasons that I can sometimes feel indecisive.

It's because I don't always know what my intuition is or if I even have one, and if I do have one, should I follow it? Sometimes I think that I have intuition, but it's bad intuition. I have intuitions that are telling me to do things that I know aren't a good idea, or I don't have intuition at all. So I asked my friend Naga.

He is currently the director of marketing (and an incredible data scientist) at an artificial intelligence company. I also asked my little sister Hannah Mills. She is a veterinary assistant at an emergency veterinary hospital. Both of them have to make decisions quickly and efficiently.

Here's what my sister Hannah had to say:

"For me, intuition is like a gut instinct that has more to do with like personal safety. Like if you feel that this isn't safe or a smart decision."

Here's what Naga had to say:

“It's like instinct where you don't have to analyze anything. You have choices, right? Two choices. You can have the left road or the right road, and I'm not going to second guess myself, or I'm not gonna think about it, I'm going to take the left road.

Intuition is based on instinct and that comes from being conditioned on what is right and what is wrong. My intuition right now, I feel like this is like a passive decision slash intuition, but is to lose weight, get healthy, and cut the fat, right? And that's something everybody knows that they should do.”

So two somewhat different definitions of intuition there. For Hannah, intuition is something that comes up in the moment and has a lot to do with personal safety. It sounds pretty situational, whereas, for Naga, his sense of intuition is that it's more about a general positive lifestyle, or knowledge of what he should do in his life.

Both of them saw it as being something unconscious. It's not something you choose or reason your way towards.

So here's what's bothering me.

I don't think that I personally often have a strong sense of intuition. And that has held me back or at least made me feel frustrated because sometimes I ask people for advice about what I should be doing in a particular situation or what choice I should make, and they tell me stuff like,

“Oh, well, you know, follow your gut, follow your heart. Do you have an intuition, like following your gut feeling?”

And sometimes with some of the big choices I've had to make in life, I don't have a gut feeling.

I was talking to this guy recently. He's a smart guy, actually a psychologist, and he was talking about how he had two children and he wanted to decide whether or not to have a third kid. He knew that rationally, logically having a kid would be an expensive choice.

Some thoughts and observations on the ways childhood experiences and mental models can shape us. Subscribe on Substack or Apple Podcasts.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit superdecider.substack.com

Today's episode of Super Decider is about low-stakes versus high-stakes choices. It's also about one of decision-making's most intransigent complicating factors. It's the inevitable passage of time. Stay tuned if you're planning to make a big career or relationship decision. Think about getting married, breaking up with your significant other, quitting your job, or going back to school.

Big takeaways from today will be:

Strategies for identifying high vs. low stakes decisions.
Why does the amount of time you have to make a decision matter?

I'll also talk about whether you should second-guess your answers when you take a test like the SAT. We'll cover something called "optimal stopping theory," and the Secretary Problem. We're even going to do a little math — but I promise, not a lot.

My Mortgage vs. My Wallet

About a year ago, I bought a house. I sold my first place, a small home in the DC suburbs, and moved to a smaller town with more room and better schools.

Selling a house and buying another one meant that I had to make many decisions that felt were very high-stakes. For example, the location mattered. I work from home, but if I ever have to go back to the office, I might have to sell the new house. I also learned that all the houses I liked the best were outside of my price range.

One thing you should know about me is that I am always tempted to agonize over decisions. I mean ... that's the reason I started this podcast. The other day I spent an embarrassing amount of time looking on Amazon for a new wallet. I found one I liked, but it was 100 bucks, and I was like, "no way am I spending that much on a wallet."

But, when my real estate agent suggested tacking on an extra 10,000 dollars to my offer, I said, "hey let's do it!" I spent more time researching the right wallet to get, and trying to shave 30 bucks off the price than I did on tacking on 10,000 dollars to my mortgage.

That's NOT rational. Sure, the 10,000 dollars will be spread out over 30 years, so monthly it's not a lot. But it's still 10,000 dollars plus interest. When it comes to finances and building wealth, big things like your mortgage and your salary matter a lot more than saving money on small purchases.

For more on this concept, by the way, I recommend I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. It's a great introduction to building wealth. He has simple advice like it's ok to spend money on the things you're most passionate about, as long as you save on the things you don't care about as much.

One of the points from Sethi's book that stuck with me is that the purchases that carry interest, like your house and your car, generally matter the most. They matter more than something like how much you spend on coffee every day, so saving 30 bucks on a wallet.

But I'm getting off-topic.

Back to decision-making!

It's too easy to mix up low-stakes and high-stakes decisions. That's because high-stakes decisions can feel overwhelming. They feel out of our control. They sometimes involve big numbers. But low-stakes decisions put us in the driver's seat. We sometimes spend time on them even when they don't matter because we like to feel in control.

We sometimes devote more effort to small decisions than big ones. We feel like we should get them right. But big decisions can feel overwhelming. Sometimes, we make big decisions quickly to get them off our plates.

99% percent of all our decisions are low-stakes or no-stakes. The phone or the wallet we buy, the movie we watch, or the dinner we order tonight won’t matter a few weeks from now. Even if they do matter a bit, like buying a phone, they’re usually reversible: you can usually return the phone or get another one later.

But that doesn't al

Imagine:

You already have a good job. You like your job, but it doesn't pay well. And then you get a job offer that pays a lot better. And it also looks like a great job, but one downside is it's far away. You don't want to commute that much.

So what do you do? Do you take that job offer that pays well but is far away? Do you stick with the current job that pays less well, but it's a lot closer?

That's a false dichotomy.

You think you only have two options. But you have lots of options. You might have some good options you haven't even considered yet:

Quit your job, but don't accept the job offer. Go back to school or start a business instead.
Commit to finding a new job that is willing to offer you the same salary, but is closer.
Go back to the hiring manager and say...

"Listen, I like this opportunity but it's too far away. I'm going to need an opportunity to work from home. Or I'm gonna need a stipend to help me move. I'm going to need these accommodations for this to be the right decision for me."

I'm always surprised by how often I get stuck in a false dichotomy. I get stuck between this choice or that choice. I don't take the time to think about why neither option has to be that way and why I might want to follow the third path. I might be able to change things up.

I remember a time in my life when I was working in New York City. I hated my job. I began looking for other jobs nearby. I also began looking for jobs in South Carolina, because I'd always wanted to move there.

I started sending out job applications and didn't get any responses. After a while, I felt frustrated and I was thinking, what do I do?

Do I keep applying for jobs? Do I give up? And then I started applying for jobs in Maryland. I started to get responses. I don't know why, but I had been stuck between these two options, NYC or South Carolina. Only when I started looking at the third option, Maryland, I started to get a lot of responses to my applications.

Often when we feel indecisive in my experience, it's because we're trapped in a false dichotomy of some kind.

Sometimes that false dichotomy comes from external sources, such as people who don't want us to think outside the box... people who want us to think that we only have two choices. Sometimes it's internal. Sometimes we convince ourselves to hyper-focus on one or two options when there are many more out there.

That can be one of the situations that makes us most indecisive. Two choices seem almost exactly equal or they seem so unpredictable that we can't pick one.

3 Questions to Tackle False Dichotomies

What could I change about either option that would make this a way easier decision? For example, if you're comparing two job offers, could you negotiate for better benefits higher salary, or extra time off, at one of the jobs?
Can I issue an ultimatum? I’ve never an advocate for issuing ultimatums if you can’t follow through, but if your back is against a wall and you really have no other choice, sometimes “change this or else” can be the right move — as long as you are ready and able to follow through.
What if I didn't choose either option? What if I didn't take either job or any job at all? What if I went back to school, would it be so bad to take a sabbatical or a vacation?
How can I make this decision reversible? Is there a way to test either option before committing, let's say you are about to start a job in a new state, but you're not sure you'll like it? Maybe don't move and buy a house yet. Maybe rent for now. Maybe commit to you checking back in after three months and deciding whether you wanna stay at that.

We often have these scripts in our heads that we have to do one thing or the other. And then that script causes us to stop focusing on all the options available to us.

Create

A Short Message from Chris

Sometimes, I use podcasts to learn new skills. I skip around and listen to whatever episodes seem most relevant. But I’m hoping you’ll listen to each episode of Super Decider in order. Please go back if you haven’t yet, and listen to episodes one and two.

Also, please subscribe to Super Decider. It’s free and it’s an easy way to let me know if this content is valuable. Every episode I post centers around a lesson that I’ve learned through a lot of research and trial and error.

My goal for each episode is that you learn at least one valuable lesson each time you listen.

My golden rule for each episode is that it has to center around something I learned that either changed my life or helped me to become a more confident decision-maker.

Ready to become a Super Decider? Check out the archive. Start at the beginning and listen in order, because each episodes builds on the last.

Today’s Topic: Framing

In today’s post, I’m going to share some tips and advice about framing your decision. Think of every choice you make as a question. The way you word that question can change everything.

Example: Paint Colors

Let’s say you want to paint your home office, but you don’t know what color to paint it. You could frame your choice like this:

”What color should I paint my home office?”

That’s a choice, and it’s a question. But, you could also frame your choice with a different question, such as:

”What color can I paint my home office?”

Note the difference between “should” and “can.” I’ll talk about this difference more in later episodes, but it can be an important mindset shift.

There’s also:

”What color would I like my home office to be?”
”Should I paint my home office, and if so, what color?”
”How many colors should I paint my home office?”
”What colors will make my home office look more professional and feel more relaxing?”
“How can I make my home office look more professional and feel more relaxing?”
“Will Yellow or White make my home office feel happier?

The list could go on and on. I’m not saying that you need to think of every possible way to frame your decision. But, the question you ask will have a lot of influence on the answer you come to.

How?

There are two reasons that the exact question you ask matters so much. The first is psychological.

Here’s an example:

Can of soda A is labeled “95 percent sugar-free!”
Can of soda B is labeled “Only 5 percent sugar!”

Which can of soda is healthier, can A or can B?

Research shows that many people will pick Can A because 95 is a bigger number, even though neither can is healthier than the other.

Psychologists and marketers call this the “framing effect” and it is a lot more influential on the choices you make than you might realize. Marketers use this type of psychological trick all the time. They’ll offer you 10% off of a 10-dollar item because they know that 10 percent off sounds better than offering you single-dollar savings. At the same time, for items over 100 dollars, the effect reverses.

Marketers would rather offer you 50 dollars off of a 500-dollar item than ten percent off of the same item. It’s how our brains work (especially mine, because I had a pretty mediocre fourth-grade math teacher).

The framing effect can be a big problem for political surveys. Researchers Matthew Feinberg and Rob Willer found that Republicans and Democrats respond differently to questions about environmental regulation. No surprises there. But, their responses varied depending on how researchers framed the questions. Republicans, for example, were more likely to support regulation to keep

Preview: In my last post, we talked about some of the unnecessary pressures that can make big decisions more difficult. Be sure to check it out if you haven’t yet. This time, we’re going to talk about some of the practical considerations you should always think about before making a big decision. Then we’ll dive into a bonus tip to help people-pleasures set boundaries and get some much needed ROI.

When you have to make a big decision, it’s easy to get stuck on big questions. Let’s say that you have a good friend who’s starting a business. He wants you to go in as his co-founder. But being a co-founder means you'll have to quit your job. At the same time, this could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be your own boss... and make a lot of money doing it.

Faced with a life-changing decision like this, you might start thinking about questions like:

“How much do I trust my friend? Can our friendship survive doing business together?”
“Do I want to be an entrepreneur? Can I handle long hours and lots of uncertainty?”

Today’s tip is really a checklist. Before you worry about anything else, you need to make sure that your choices check all the right boxes. If any of the options you’re considering don’t pass this test, you should drop them from consideration right away.

Use this checklist whenever you have a big decision to make. It will save you a lot of unnecessary stress if you can eliminate bad choices without overthinking them.

Some of these checklist items might seem obvious when you read them. But, you might be surprised by how often we forget about them when we’re faced with a big, life-changing opportunity. It’s easy to let overthinking get in the way of practical considerations.

So here’s the checklist. Ask yourself these questions every time you have a big choice to make.

Practical Considerations

Are all my options realistic?

Are there any choices I should remove from consideration because they are not achievable? In the example I gave, it would be important to know whether your friend’s business has a chance of working out. Does he have investors? Does he have any clients lined up? Does he have previous business experience or technical know-how? Or have you gotten caught up with enthusiasm for a pie-in-the-sky fantasy?

Are all my options affordable?

Though there are exceptions, such as medical expenses, if you can’t afford something you usually shouldn’t buy it. That means you need to know your budget. You also need to think about how much something might cost you. And, you need to know how you might pay for it. There’s no point in considering whether to buy a Ferrari if you only have the budget for a pre-owned Chevy Cobalt. I know it sounds obvious, but take a look at the average person’s credit card statements. We often forget to consider affordability when we make big decisions.

Do I have the time and resources for all my options?

Many decisions, like choosing to go back to school or joining a gym, come with a time commitment attached. (Plus you’ll need books or equipment.) No matter how much you might want to do something, be sure that you can make time for it. For example, let’s say you have a good job offer, but it’s a three-hour commute. You can’t move closer, and you can’t work from home. There’s no point in agonizing over that decision — there’s no way you can take that job.

Do any of my choices make me compromise on a deeply held personal value or put a much more important goal at risk?

If a choice puts something more important to you, like your health, your integrity, or your family at risk, that’s usually a good enough reason to skip it.

Is there a return on investment, or ROI, for the choices you’re considering?

We sometimes agonize over decisions that don’t have an upside either way. It may sound selfish, but it’s often worth asking

This is a re-recording of the original episode, using a more high-quality microphone.

I posted the pilot intro episode to this show yesterday and it’s already getting some downloads! (If you haven’t yet, give it a listen.) Before I dive in to todays Super Decider strategy tip, here’s a quick rundown of how the show is going to work.

But first… What to Expect from the Super Decider Podcast

I’m planning to start with a decision-making boot camp of about 20 to 25 episodes that I’ve already planned out. Each episode will center around a tip, lesson, or technique to help you become a better, faster, more confident decision-maker. I’ll also try to provide exercises at the end of each episode. If anything you’ve learned is helpful, you can practice it until the next episode comes out, which should be about once a week.

I’ve structured each tip so that they correspond to steps in a unique and comprehensive decision-making process. At the end of the first 20 or so episodes, I’ll put everything together in an ebook or download. Whenever you have a big decision to make, you can pull that out and run through each step to get clarity for almost any difficult decision. After that, I’m going to ask you, as listeners and readers, to contribute questions and topics. I’ll run through some of the most common life decisions we all face, and I’ll bring on some guest speakers. So, be sure to stay tuned, and feel free to comment or reach out if you have a big decision or question that we can cover on Super Decider.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, on to…

… Super Decider strategy tip #1!

Have you ever bought a car?

If you’ve ever bought a car, a salesman has told you “there’s a lot of interest in this car. If you don’t buy it now, it may be gone tomorrow. I can only hold onto it for one more day. This model is flying off the lot!”

He knows the car will still be there tomorrow, and there are others like it. But, you’re sitting in his office, and he’s bombarding you with sales tactics. He’s telling you he can give you a “special price,” but only today.

Stressful situations like this make you less rational but more anxious, right? So here’s super decider tip #1:

When you have to make a big decision, stop and consider whether you’re in the right frame of mind. If possible, take yourself out of any stressful situations. For example, you can tell that aggressive salesperson you’re going to grab lunch, and you’ll be back in the afternoon.

When possible, you should usually wait till later to make a big decision if:

You feel sleep-deprived, hungry, intoxicated, or impaired in some way.
You’re experiencing temporary high stress or anxiety — especially if it’s caused by the people or environment around you.
Someone is pressuring you, especially someone like a salesperson, who wants you to make the wrong decision and spend too much.
You are under an artificial time constraint.

A Quick Story

I recently called a local company to ask about installing gutter guards around my roof. I wanted to keep leaves and other debris from clogging up my gutters. A company salesperson came out to my house and offered to install the gutter guards for a mere (get this) 12,000 dollars. But, he said it was the end of the month, aaaand they had excess inventory, so he could offer me a special deal. They’d install the gutter guards for only 8,000 dollars, but only if I signed a contract right there and then.

It was a tempting offer. The gutter guards would be under warranty. They’d be professionally installed. And I wouldn’t have to climb up a long ladder to my roof. I said no thanks.

I bought the materials online for 50 dollars, borrowed a ladder, an