Deciding Between Two Things

Release date: 27 Sep 2024

Views: 177

This week I started a new job. The new gig is quite a bit different to my previous one. It was a really tough decision at first since I didn't really dislike my previous job. In fact I really loved it.

There is an exercise that helped me make this decision though. I first came across it when I was reading The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco.

It helps you decide between two things quantitively. In my case this was my old job and my new job.

Here is how it works.

1. Create three columns. Factors, Decision 1, Decision 2.
2. In the factors column, list out all the things that you care about regarding the decision. In the jobs example this would be stuff like growth, stability, salary and location.
3. Score the factors from 1-10 in terms of how important they are for you. Again in the jobs example if you care about salary the most, you would score that 10 and if you don't care about location that much you would score that 3.
4. Now on the right two columns rate Decision 1 and Decision 2 based on your factors. If one job pays closer to your desired salary, rate it higher than the other job. Do that for each factor.
5. To get a score of each factor for both decisions, multiply the factor score you gave by the decision score you gave for that factor. For example, if I rate the salary factor a 10 and decision 1 a score of 8 for that factor. I would do 10 * 8. Which is 80. That means decision one has a score of 80 for the salary factor.
6. Do this for all of the factors and add up the scores.
7. The decision with the highest score aligns closer to your overall values.

Making this decision was really hard at first. But with this technique it became a lot easier and allowed me to evaluate what I care about the most in a job.

This exercise can be used for anything in life. I hope you found this helpful :)