# How do you decide?



## JustRob (Jun 3, 2017)

This question is a potential opening to a book that I am contemplating writing, so here your response may help me to set out that opening. To elaborate, the full question is as follows.

When all possible influences that you have considered are finely balanced how do you make a decision? Do you toss a coin, ask a friend, pray to God, consult your horoscope or what? Perhaps you mentally toss a virtual coin, trusting that your subconscious mind, fate, the hand of God or some other indeterminate influence will guide you to the right decision. Maybe you just sleep on it and hope that tomorrow things will seem clearer. 

So, what are the possibilities, the ones that you can think of? I have mentioned some that spring to mind, but no doubt there are others. Any suggestions may help me with the all important opening to the book.


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## Non Serviam (Jun 4, 2017)

If it's that finely balanced, then I'd ask myself which choice is most easily reversed.


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## Shemp (Jun 4, 2017)

Speed thrills! 

   I would choose the best opening, that gets the reader involved immediately. 

  Grab their attention, and put a death-grip on it, with an economy of words.


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## JustRob (Jun 5, 2017)

Shemp said:


> Speed thrills!
> 
> I would choose the best opening, that gets the reader involved immediately.
> 
> Grab their attention, and put a death-grip on it, with an economy of words.



You have drawn my attention to a very important point. You read what I wrote as being about _choosing_ an opening to my book, whereas what I meant was that the question itself _will be _the opening to the book, which is about how we make decisions. I can see how my words could be interpreted as having the meaning that you perceived, so thanks for that. I often mention how easily others come up with ambiguities and here I've evidently created one myself. 

To clarify what I wrote originally, the second paragraph of my OP is effectively the draft opening to my book. I was just wondering whether anyone could suggest other ways that people might make decisions when everything seems to be in the balance.

It is true that this question is pertinent to writers, who inevitably make many almost arbitrary decisions while putting a story together. Personally I delight in drawing on unusual sources of knowledge so that my writing contains many little surprises for the reader to discover. However, this question is about what one does when those sources of influence all run dry and all that is left is what seems to be a totally arbitrary decision to be made. It may simply be whether to remove something from the text, leave it in or replace it with something else. I'm sure that one answer from present company would be to post the item on WF for comment, but I've already covered that with "ask a friend" in my OP.

@Non Serviam:  I like your suggestion very much, but I suppose, to be pedantic, that that should be included in "all possible influences" already considered, shouldn't it? I was looking for the last resort, the "last straw" so to speak, when absolutely every rational influence that could tip the scales has already been added to the mix.


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## Non Serviam (Jun 5, 2017)

I'd ask someone more knowledgeable than me.  But if that's not allowed either, then I would stop agonising and vacillating, pick one at random and get on with the job.


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## BlondeAverageReader (Jun 5, 2017)

Sorry angel. I forgot that the computer was logged on in your name and accidentally stole your WF identity.

Post deleted.

JustRob


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## JustRob (Jun 5, 2017)

Right, having accidentally just explored my feminine side, which is normally entirely my angel's domain, I hasten to add, I'll resume my real persona. Oh, am I going to be in trouble with her for that. 



Non Serviam said:


> I'd ask someone more knowledgeable than me. But if that's not allowed either, then I would stop agonising and vacillating, pick one at random and get on with the job.


Yes, that's possibly the crux of my question, what you would regard as an adequately random method of picking. Do you believe that your mind is capable of making an entirely random decision or do you feel the need to use an independent random device like tossing a coin? On the other hand, would you trust your mind to make the "random" choice specifically because it might subconsciously take into account some factor that you could have consciously overlooked? 

 Then again, it may be a question about where one ultimately puts one's faith, using that word in its widest sense. Is it in chance, in God, in fate, in oneself, in someone else or in something else? However, I wasn't expecting any profound replies to the question setting out anyone's beliefs, but simply what they do in practice for whatever reason. For example, do some people really have a single lucky coin that they always toss? In your case I am just interested to know what your method of random selection involves, no more than that. 

 Almost in passing but of some relevance, I have noticed that fortuitous outcomes can arise from searching deeply into the list of links listed by Google in response to a search. I suppose that this amounts to a modern day equivalent of the old approach of opening a bible at a random page. For those who believe in the guidance of God it must be assumed that He, being in all things, has a hand in the sequence of entries in Google searches, because they seem to be pretty random to me, so it seems a perfectly valid substitute. Unfortunately the unusual subjects that I tend to search for are inclined to result in all the links from around page four onwards being to Chinese websites, which are virtually incomprehensible to me. Whether this implies that such a technique leads to confusion, Confucionism, Taoist wu-wei or just plain old woo-woo I don't know, but it does work well enough for me on average.


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## Sam (Jun 5, 2017)

BlondeAverageReader said:


> Sorry angel. I forgot that the computer was logged on in your name and accidentally stole your WF identity.
> 
> Post deleted.
> 
> JustRob



Sock puppet!

LOL.


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## JustRob (Jun 5, 2017)

Sam said:


> Sock puppet!
> 
> LOL.



Yes, she could very well sock you for suggesting that, but after so many years together I couldn't say which of us manipulates the other any more. Both being Scorpios, if you believe in that astrology woo-woo, we are soulmates but also very independent. For example, we have three bank accounts, one each and a joint one, which usually has nothing in it. 

So far as the reality of my angel, there is somewhere in the depths of WF a picture of her sitting on the iron throne. Enough said? So far as the reality of me is concerned, what lunatic would invent me as a plausible person? Certainly not my angel. She's far too sensible.


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## Terry D (Jun 5, 2017)

It very much depends on the sort of decision I need to make. For practical decisions, like major purchases, I do much research, form list of pros and cons, and weigh all options before... asking my wife. Seriously, though, I do measure my decisions in real life. I like to use as much data as possible. Doing that I usually end up with an option which 'feels right'.

In my writing, I use a far different method. Many of my choices are made as I am typing -- or seem to be. In reality, I think those seat-of-the-pants decisions are like bubbles of gas arising from a mixture of ingredients which have been fermenting in my subconscious mind for a long time. There's nothing magical, or mystical, or 'muse-like' about it. It's simply the way the creative parts of the human mind work.


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## Shemp (Jun 5, 2017)

Please disregard my previous post.   It was authored by my autistic clone, who was using my laptop and WF identity.


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## JustRob (Jun 5, 2017)

@Shemp: I can believe that. It happens to the best of us.

@Terry: Should I put asking the wife under my heading "ask a friend" then, or should I not ask?
I wish I could believe your claim that there's nothing magical, mystical or 'muse-like' about our inspiration for writing, but my only experience in that field has given me cause to wonder just how the purely creative mind does work. 

According to a book on writing that I've been reading it isn't unusual for a writer to notice that his future life seems to reflect what he wrote, so apparently I'm not alone in this. The book doesn't appear to explain the phenomenon though. Perhaps we shouldn't agonise over planning our future if the future is quite capable of planning itself on our behalf.

I came up with the plot of a short story on this theme but don't think I wrote it. In it a man and woman go to buy a vacuum cleaner and, as you say Terry, the man identifies the ideal one, but at the last minute his wife takes an irrational dislike to the colour, so they buy another model. The story then reveals that, had they bought the logical choice, she would have been electrocuted because of a fault in it, but they never find this out. I can't remember now whether I wrote the story or not, the past being as much a mystery to me as the future apparently. My memory is evidently pants as well as my creativity.


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## Phil Istine (Jun 5, 2017)

I'm trying to work out if you're asking the audience or going 50:50.


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## JustRob (Jun 5, 2017)

Phil Istine said:


> I'm trying to work out if you're asking the audience or going 50:50.



Is that a reference to a game show? My angel and I don't watch them, so I can't be sure.


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## Phil Istine (Jun 5, 2017)

JustRob said:


> Is that a reference to a game show? My angel and I don't watch them, so I can't be sure.



It is. Not to worry


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## Bloggsworth (Jun 5, 2017)

Immediately choose one of the options - You will very soon know if it was the wrong one. Sounds odd, but it is actually faster (you waste less time prevaricating) and more likely to be correct. One can waste days swaying this way and that, far better to make a decision NOW, and change later than to waste time.


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## JustRob (Jun 5, 2017)

Bloggsworth said:


> Immediately choose one of the options - You will very soon know if it was the wrong one.



So you mean make the choice in your own mind trusting in your own lack of judgement. Yes, I can see the logic in that. If you can't determine which is the better choice then maybe that's because there isn't a worse one and whatever you choose to do will be satisfactory. I believe that I have made some good choices in life but there's no saying whether others could have been even better. 

I have always considered myself lucky for finding my angel. When I returned to my old school on my retirement to make a donation to its charitable foundation I discovered that my closest contemporary there was just about to become the head of the foundation and treasurer in charge of some three hundred million pounds. He had become a solicitor, then a partner in a firm of international lawyers and a legal consultant to the government, plus having substantial wealth, a big house and a family of five children. When I asked him how he had achieved all that he said, "I got lucky." 

When a reunion of our old house at the school was held my angel attended it with me even though it was on her birthday and she would celebrate it with what amounted to a school dinner. My old friend observed that he couldn't imagine his own wife ever doing that. I told him that I had left much of my money to the school in my will, having no children, but as it would first go to my angel if I died before her the school would have to trust her to leave it to them on my behalf subsequently and, she being younger than myself, this was the most likely situation. He replied that, apart from being younger than me, my angel was infinitely better looking. While I was impressed by how successful he had been in business it was very evident that he was equally impressed by how successful I had been in love, envious even maybe. He never asked me how I got to find such a wife when I had been so socially inept in my school days but, had he asked, I could only have replied, "I got lucky." 

We are both pleased that the other seems to have got what he wanted out of life, even though our lives are very different. At school I was actually considered to have been the more academically successful and quite possibly could have led a life like his, but I don't envy him and I don't believe that I made the wrong choices. If you are content to live with the choices that you have made then they are satisfactory ones, aren't they? Why worry about whether others could have been better? Often at our Sunday dinner I raise my glass to my angel and give my toast to life, "So far, so good."

So, maybe we are agreed that when fools rush in they may actually discover where angels _don't_ fear to tread. I certainly did.


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