Tool 4 — Control the decision
You’re driving down a desert road trying to reach a big city. The barren landscape allows you to see miles ahead. Slowly the city starts to come into view, you’re getting closer. You suddenly come across an intersection where the road forks. Straight or right is the decision. No there’s no Google maps. Imagine it’s the 1950s or something.
You see the city dead straight ahead and keep going straight. What you didn’t see is after a few miles the straight path dead ends at a canyon. The right path continues away from the city for a few miles, then makes a hard left leading to a bridge which crosses the canyon, then continues into the city.
Rewind back to the intersection. At that moment the correct decision wasn’t inaccessible to you. You simply chose the wrong option. This mistake wasn’t because you’re bad at making decisions, but because you didn’t accurately question or think long enough about each option. Maybe with more scrutiny you could have looked right and saw the existence of the bridge in the distance.
To consider each option in a decision is to include each option in a realm of possible outcomes. In this example since we quickly disregarded the right fork, the correct decision wasn’t in the realm of possible outcomes.
I’m not one to believe in the existence of alternate universes or realities. However this concept is fundamental to decision making. Every decision we come across marks a fork and each option leads to a different state, which represents a different path of life (recall from our state diagram that the combination of decision and state represents a path).
The first three tools laid groundwork for decision making. We established true happiness as priority number one, we became aware of the role decisions have, and we focused our attention inward. Now the key to our ability to actually choose the right path will come from our ability to control the decision.
The importance of tool 4 is a result of the sheer number of decisions we have to make (as discussed earlier). To go about it randomly is to go about life with no direction. It’s saying “I don’t know or care to know what my path is so, fuck it!” Without a doubt I think all of us have had periods of life with this motto. For some of us that time is right now. I definitely still have days where I don’t know what I’m doing.
But “I don’t care to know” can no longer be our attitude because we’ve been busy establishing a framework for a better motto. It’s one filled with a purpose to live the best version of our life. You may not be sure of your life’s direction. Just know that now it’s time to take hold of the reigns.
The book Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is an absolutely incredible source of knowledge for the mechanics of how people think. I highly encourage reading this for a more in-depth exploration into decision making.
Our minds are under the control of two “forces” which Kahneman calls System 1 and System 2. These forces are essentially the two mechanisms our minds use to think, process information, react, and take action. I’m going to refer to the functions of these concepts A LOT in this book, so let’s take some time to understand them.
Think of System 1 as your automatic mode. Under control of System 1 your mind “operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.” It is our gut-reaction, our intuition, our judgements.
System 1 is highly emotional. It’s our body’s immediate response to something. We have virtually no control over these responses. When someone asks you to solve “2 + 2 =” you know the answer immediately with no thought needed. When you see a snake your body tenses up and your immediate reaction is to run. This is a decision you cannot control because it’s one made by System 1. When taking public transportation we identify who around us is more likely a friend and who is more likely an enemy because System 1 automatically makes judgements based on multiple factors (facial expression, body features, posture, clothing, smell, etc).
System 1 is home to bias. No matter how woke you are, when someone says the word “secretary” most people immediately get the mental image of a woman. The same happens when someone says “firefighter” and most people immediately get the mental image of a man. System 1 is not only built by primal instincts (like running from a snake), but it’s also trained by human-created stereotypes. Think about how much more afraid a black man is than a white man when pulled over by the police. Different automatic responses, due to different System 1 developments, due to different life experiences.
Think of System 2 as your thoughtful mode. Under control of System 2 your mind “allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it.” It’s our computation mechanism and center for thought, conscious choice, and controlled response. System 2 does not happen automatically and requires mental effort. Examples of System 2 don’t need to be as complex as solving a rubix cube. They also include things like making sure to get the items on a grocery list while at the store. Increasing your pace during a run. Even simply reciting your own phone number requires some mental effort to retrieve it from memory.
Though conceptually they operate independently, the two systems together help explain human behavior. Let’s look at a couple situations where both systems influence decision making.
You’re driving on a highway and someone in another lane suddenly veers toward your car attempting to change lanes. Without any thought you instantly swerve to the next lane to avoid collision. You also immediately feel an intense anger and have the urge to speed up in pursuit of the other car. Everything up until this point was under the influence of System 1. These reactions were automatic.
Now, instead of pursuing the other car to yell a big “Fuck you”, you decide to continue driving as normal. Your reasoning may be that engaging with the other driver is dangerous and could escalate things further. This decision and the reasoning used to make it were under the influence of System 2. It required conscious thought and control.
One more situation. You’re taking public transportation. At one stop a battered, smelly homeless person gets on, walks toward you, then stops a few feet away. Without thinking you immediately tense up, and back up a few steps. Your System 1 has identified this person as a threat.
Suddenly the homeless person starts yelling gibberish extremely loudly, walking around the vehicle while doing so. At some point you will get the urge to yell “Stop it!” as this man is obviously causing everyone in the area distress. However, instead you resist the urge with reasoning that this man clearly suffers a mental health issue. In a social situation like this the more acceptable behavior is to ignore the man. Again, this decision and the reasoning used to make it was all System 2.
While most people feel in control of their actions, the hard reality is there’s constant back-and-forth influence happening between automatic mode and thoughtful mode.
System 1 is constantly alert to the world in front of you. It quickly reacts, many times creating an urgent “Ooo I know what to do!” for any situation, then passes off control to System 2 for further analysis.
System 2 will respond with a more cautious “Hmmm, is this really what I should do?” Sometimes automatic responses will be confirmed by System 2 and execution is carried out. Sometimes those responses will be intercepted, then repressed or changed.
Understanding the influence these two forces have in your decision making is critical.
System 1 has a very useful characteristic in that it’s efficient. We know hundreds of decisions need to be made everyday, and system 1 helps to quickly carry out the ones that shouldn’t require mental effort.
For example you’re daily commute to work. Unless you live in a traffic hellhole requiring constant audibles (like Los Angeles), your daily route to work is consistent. Imagine a world without System 1 that requires you to think about every turn you make. At every intersection you would need to analyze: “is right or left the better path?” The amount of mental effort required for this would be exhausting. Instead, it’s much more beneficial to go on autopilot when navigating to work. Now your attention can be better directed to another activity like listening to a podcast.
Not only is automatic mode efficient, it also better serves our most primitive needs. Imagine someone running toward you with a knife. Do you really need to spend time thinking “Hmmm could this person harm me? Or am I in a safe situation?” Hell no. Your best chance of staying alive starts by running away as fast as possible. Our minds pick up on unsafe situations immediately, with no effort, because this is crucial to survival.
Automatic mode is littered with flaws when it comes to decision making however. Knowing this is perhaps the most important knowledge for making better decisions.
For starters it’s very primitive. It acts as our most basic means of survival. When we look into a crowd of people automatic mode immediately provides information of who we can and can’t trust. People with harsh facial features and expressions, and those with rough voices subconsciously appear untrustworthy. This can be easily exploited. For example most notorious serial killers act extremely charming and charismatic, so automatic mode incorrectly decides this is a person we can trust and feel safe with.
Primitive functions like matching facial features with personality are based on bare-minimum information. Automatic mode doesn’t have time to hear the full story. It’s decisions are constructed from limited data points. Continuing with the example above, our judgement of trustworthiness failed to consider key information such as the person’s backstory, what they do on a daily basis, and who they’re friends with.
Automatic mode also has a weird relationship with our emotions. It both influences and is influenced by emotion. Why is this a potential harmful recipe? Emotion tends to dominate decision making when present. It’s a very strong force that overshadows reason and can create erratic behavior.
Think back to our road rage example. Automatic mode kicked in to help us swerve away from the oncoming car. This led to an immediate feeling of anger. Without a strong System 2 to keep this response in check, we could just as easily have been controlled by the emotion to pursue the other car. Road rage is textbook erratic behavior driven by automatic mode.
A study conducted in Germany found that automatic mode is also influenced by emotion. The team of psychologists analyzed participants’ ability to complete intuitive (i.e. automatic) tasks under different moods. They found that being in a good mood more than doubled accuracy of the tasks, while being in an unhappy mood essentially rendered intuition useless. Accuracy when unhappy was about the same accuracy as random guesses.
Anyone notice a potential dangerous cycle? Automatic mode can leave us in a negative emotional state, which in turn weakens its own intuitive function. This means the force which happens automatically can lead to poor decision making of its own doing! Not cool.
Automatic mode also thrives on past associations, which can lead to problematic biases. When someone says “teacher” the reason you immediately construct mental images of a woman is because over time you’ve been trained to associate these together. Most, if not all, of your grade school teachers were probably women.
How harmful can this bias be? The fact really is that 76% of American teachers are female. Doesn’t that mean this association is accurate? It’s not. Being male vs. female in fact has no correlation to teaching ability. But now — thanks to automatic mode — we have inaccurate associations that influence job occupation decision making!
Because of this dependence on associations automatic mode can be trained by repetition and habitual behavior. This isn’t necessarily a bad quality. Habits can be beneficial or harmful. Here’s where this gets us into trouble. You just had a stressful day at work. On the drive home your System 2 is searching for things to help you feel better. The glow of McDonald’s golden arches appear in the distance. It’s not part of your routine drive home to stop for fast food, so System 2 is active and contemplating.
Since it’s been a rough day you deserve to indulge right now. Turns out a sinfully delicious burger was the perfect medicine to destress. Subconsciously, your mind takes note of an association between McDonald’s, and de-stressing after a long day.
Over time this special occasion turns into your special routine. After stressful work days a stop at McDonalds becomes part of the drive home. After some amount of building up this habit the pitstop will happen with little to know thought — that’s what habit is afterall? This is how associations fuel automatic mode responses. Repetition trains automatic decision making regardless of whether the choice helps or harms our journey.
This tool is about taking control of decision making. So the fact that our minds are heavily influenced by a force that has many flaws, and which is largely out of our control, is scary. But luckily we have another force that’s much more obedient to combat this!
Those with a strong thoughtful mode are able to intercept many of the reactions from automatic mode for further processing. We need to realize the power that thoughtful mode has! It has the ability to take control of our urges, whether they’re beneficial or harmful, and be the commander of the end result.
(more about System 2)
Taking control of decision making is critical in our journey. We know there are an infinite number of paths, yet very little of them lead to true happiness. We know that decisions are the vehicles of transportation along these paths. To relinquish control of these decisions is to take our hand off the steering wheel and close our eyes.
To be in control we have to be aware of the subconscious workings of automatic mode. We have little control over this force, but we can train our thoughtful mode to better inspect urges, instincts, and biases to verify if they are the correct course of action. “Controlling thoughts and behaviors is one of the tasks that System 2 performs”, says Kahneman.
This is no easy task. In fact it’s natural that thoughtful mode is lazy. Any amount of conscious thinking requires mental effort. Imagine if thoughtful mode tried to control every automatic mode response. Our psyche would very quickly lose its shit.
Kahneman’s analysis on an overburdened System 2: “Activities that impose high demands on System 2 require self-control, and the exertion of self-control is depleting and unpleasant. Unlike cognitive load, ego depletion is at least in part a loss of motivation. After exerting self-control in one task, you do not feel like making an effort in another, although you could do it if you really had to.”
Kahneman uses the term “cognitive ease” to describe states of increased reliance on automatic mode. Feeling relaxed and content are signs that things are going well and that there’s no need for thoughtful mode to be alert. This increases our exposure to the flaws of automatic mode. In other words, ignorance is bliss.
Am I saying we should avoid feeling relaxed and content? Not at all! These are actually signs of being in a happy state. The point I’m making is that strengthening your thoughtful mode is difficult, but the benefits are endless. You will never regret improving self-control, and it will help in many areas throughout the journey.
One quick example was discovered from an experiment by Walter Mischel that measured the self-control of four-year olds by tempting them with marshmallows. The same children who demonstrated higher levels of control were less likely to get involved with drugs as adolescents, and went on to achieve higher scores on intelligence tests.
These findings make it seem like our ability to control the urges of automatic mode are set at birth. It is very likely this predisposition is true, with early childhood development also playing a key role. But the functions of thoughtful mode can also be improved at any stage of life.
So just know that yes, both nature and nurture leave us all with different levels of self-control. But we are not helpless in changing this course. Some will just need to work harder than others.
Where do we even begin to improve thoughtful mode’s influence on decision making? How do we take back control? The following is one exercise to try out.
Spend the next few days finding one or two areas of your life you want to have more control over, or that you simply want to improve. See Part 4 for some ideas. Start simple. It could be social media, sweets, watching Netflix, jealousy, etc. Make the area you choose very clear and set reminders (physical and/or phone reminders are great). Do whatever you need to keep your choice top of mind.
I’ll use social media as the example. That’s one area most of us lack self-control in.
Automatic mode works incredibly fast, instantaneously. The first line of defense to counteract this is to slow down any decision making in the area you chose. As soon as you catch yourself on social media — or before you get there is even better — take some time to question everything like an investigator would. Why am I using this time for social media? How long do I intend to be here? Is there a better outlet for my time and attention right now?
Ask yourself these “why” questions every single time the uncontrolled behavior appears.
Be warned this will be exhausting at first. There’s a reason why we don’t spend mental effort thinking about these questions. It’s tiring, and submitting to automatic mode is effortless. Self-control vs. cognitive ease. This is the tradeoff you’ll constantly be making in the first few weeks of this exercise.
Is taking on my social media addiction worth this effort? Our previous tools can help answer that. You’ve made happiness a priority. You realize the importance of decisions, and your focus is on things that bring joy. Inability to control something like social media use feels like a distraction from all this.
This mental exercise should not strain you to the point of paranoia! Please don’t have a heart attack everytime you realize you’re five minutes into Instagram-stalking an ex. These behaviors aren’t matters of life and death. Well actually some of them might be. But for the most part training to control decision making is about removing all the shit blocking your happiness. These are simply quality of life improvements.
It will take time to achieve your goal of strengthening thoughtful mode’s grip on unwanted behavior. During this period you will become more aware of times when your efforts fail. This failure is actually important!
When you’re unable to control your area of focus, use the opportunity to reflect. What triggered the behavior? For the social media example maybe it was boredom at your job. Then set a plan for the next time you find yourself in that situation. This could mean coming to terms with dissatisfaction in your work. Maybe it’s time to think about changing positions, or asking for different projects to be part of. Many times this reflection will be painful, but it goes hand-in-hand with tool 3.
While slowing down and questioning decisions will be effortful and full of failures at first, remember that repetition leads to habit. Suppressing unwanted urges will require less and less mental involvement over time. Frustrating effort will turn into content from cognitive ease. Done correctly, at some point ignoring social media will become the automatic response. Oh shit! That’s how we take back control: retraining automatic mode to better serve the needs of our journey to true happiness.
Identify unwanted urges, work to instead control the decisions, and eventually the behavior you strive for will become habitual. When this happens, recognize and celebrate your ability to control things in life that you previously couldn’t. Then harness the same power used to accomplish this feat and apply it to other areas you want to improve.
A strong internal locus of control is required for this tool. This means believing the things that happen in our lives are due to forces within our control. We know this is true with the existence of thoughtful mode, and we even learned how it can retrain automatic mode urges.
Those with an external locus believe their path is maneuvered by forces beyond their control. There’s always reasons for not being able to make the right decisions, usually “that’s just who I am” or “that’s just the way it is”.
Why didn’t you stick with your diet? Well I’m not disciplined enough.
Why did you make that risky financial decision? Well I was pressured by management.
Why did you settle for this occupation when your dream was that occupation? It wasn’t in the cards. That’s not God’s plan for me. The industry doesn’t understand my vision.
The reality in all these situations is that you made a series of decisions. Those decisions resulted in the outcome. Having a strong external locus of control is to relinquish all power to automatic mode. We become a pawn of both our subconscious and the influence of those around us.
To reach true happiness with this mindset can only be by luck because the choices made are random. Are the odds high? Given there are hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of decisions made every day, stumbling on true happiness with an external locus is comparable to sumbling upon a lost penny in the ocean. Will you allow your path to be guided by chance, or will you take control of the outcome?
One last thing. Again I want to reiterate we can’t be absolutists with these tools. There are people who truly have little to no control of their decisions. We cannot expect these principles can be executed by 100% of the population. For example many mental disabilities will inhibit the brain’s decision making functions, taking thoughtful mode out of the picture. Those in abusive relationships are also stripped of being able to fully control decisions.
These tools have limitations, but if you’re able to use them they will positively change how you think and make decisions.
