When confronted with a multiplicity of choice, we suffer in a variety of ways. We stress whether we’re making a decision we’ll be comfortable with later, whether other people will respect our choice, whether we have explored all the options … then we make our choice and inevitably find something new about it to regret. The book terms people who think like this “maximizers”. “Have I really got the maximum out of this situation? I can’t possibly live with myself if I make the wrong choice.”

The alternative is to be more of a “satisficer”: trust your instincts, be satisfied with what you have, learn from your decisions and apply the results next time they’re needed. Aside from wanting to punch whomever coined “satisficer”, I think it’s a good strategy and basically the same conclusion you reached.

When making any decision, I try to ask myself these four questions:
How much time do I have to decide?
Who will be affected?
What is the worse case outcome?
What is the most probable outcome?

I would hope that a lot of people do the old “dueling internal voices” thing, but maybe it’s just us. At least it means we’re never lonely.

Welding as a concept just makes me smile…the word became part of my vocabulary after I saw Robin Williams talk about how his father encouraged him to go to acting school as long as he had a back-up profession, “like welding”.

Burchy