Currently, I'm looking for a job next year. With my school currently closing, my school district and many other people are helping me find an effective transfer for next year and have been agonizing over which offer is the best, which school to go to, and where is the best fit for me to grow as a teacher over the near future.
I'm having a lot of trouble making the decision.
For one, I don't want to rush a decision and just jump on the first offer I got, and also I don't want to make a decision that would be bad for me. I weigh the pros and cons of each school, pray about it, and come out just equally as indecisive as I was.
But I know I have to make a decision, and I have to make a decision soon.
"Waiting too long to make decisions can slow businesses down, frustrate employees, and mean missing critical opportunities," writes Thomas Davenport of the Harvard Business Review. Davenport urges us to make a "meta-decision analysis" where we decide how to decide. Although I was initially very confused about his prognosis, he urges us to do the following:
Think about how important our decision it is, how urgent it is, and whether we can use some organizational decision-making approaches to make it more accurate and likely to be correct.
As for the school I'm working at next year, I hope to be working at the same school in the next five years or so, a place I can develop a presence and reputation. I want to become a better teaching and be a part of a strong and cohesive school community in one of the most difficult school districts in America, but in what I believe to be the best city in the world in Baltimore.
For Davenport, the most important factor in determining how long a decision should take is how important the decision is. Decisions that aren't that important, well, just shouldn't take that long -- like deciding what to eat for lunch, how to organize the spreadsheet, or which shoes to wear outside. These are decisions that truly just don't make too much of a difference in our lives and it's important not to sweat the small stuff as much as it is devoting our mental energy to the decisions that matter.
Davenport validates my current predicament and indecisiveness over my decision by saying that for very important decisions, we have good reasons to extend and be thoughtful about the process.
For one, we have to reflect-- and the best decision making comes when we can engage our unconscious mind. Researchers at the University of Rochester found that when the unconscious brain is involved in a choice, we start to make optimal choices in our lives. These researchers recommend sleeping on a decision after reviewing key factors, and take some time away from thinking about the decision will help us make the optimal decision.
Then, we have to gather data and analyze our decisions. I know personally that you can show me all the numbers on a data sheet or spreadsheet, but that doesn't mean anything unless I can talk to someone I trust that has experienced what I'm about to go into. When contemplating schools, I like to talk to someone who has been at the school before, who I know well as a teacher and friend. Likely, their experiences speaks a lot more to me than numbers ever can, and the best forms of data are these informal observations.
Davenport says that data and analytics-based decisions are a lot more accurate than human intuition, and that a data-driven decision-making approach is probably best. However, human data and experience are the best sources of information out there, and I will use intuition based on the information I'm given.
We then have to think about how often a decision will be made when we're deciding whether to make a decision now or not. In my case, I am making a decision that I can only make once in a very long time, so it's important to be deliberate, but it's also important not to wait too long because more thinking won't be helpful.
Lastly, Davenport urges us to put a clock on our decisions. If we're struggling with a choice and taking too long, then give yourself a deadline. I still need a little more time to make the choice that defines my life over the next several years, so I take some time, consult some trusted people, pray about it, and then finally make my choice by the end of the week.
In "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost, people take a lot of inspiration in taking "the [road less traveled by," for "that has made all the difference," but what Frost really says in this famous poem is to not regret the choices you make and stick with them.
When he talks about two roads in the poem, he notes that one is "worn...really about the same" and that one road was "just as fair" as the other. And yet the narrator is agonizing over the road he didn't take when he says "I kept the first for another day!"
When Frost says he took the road less traveled by, he didn't take a road that was too much prettier, too much different from the other. But he just had to take one and stop regretting and analyzing what could have been if he took the other, which is a lesson to me, and to us.
Just make a decision, and be fierce in that decision. Somewhere down the line, you're going to think about what would have happened if you took another road or decision -- but that kind of thinking is not worth it because we can't go back to make that decision again. For Frost, the roads being worn about the same meant that there really wasn't a difference either way what decision the narrator took -- he just had to make a decision and snap himself out of the agonizing indecisiveness.
Before Frost published this book, he sent it to his friend, another poet, Edward Thomas, who was thinking about whether to join the British effort in World War I or not join as a soldier. When Thomas received this poem, he was offended that Frost was mocking his confidence and indecisiveness. Thomas would later decide to join the war and become decisive in the decision for the first time in Frost's observation.
Life only lasts for so long, and the amount of time we can spend regretting it should be limited because we can't time travel and change any of our decisions. Even if we make a decision that wasn't the best, it was our road less traveled by, and we live with it in the same sense that I would have to live with whatever school I choose next year -- and that makes all the difference. Life will go on.
