The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 195 - Forks in the Road

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hey, Peter.

Pete: I'm feeling a little torn, because there are multiple ways I could tee up this episode that will all lead to the same result. And I can't work out which of the paths to take.

Jen: Okay. The result being, we record an episode?

Pete: Yeah. In fact, we will record an episode about this conundrum, which is, how do you navigate a fork in the road when both paths lead to the same goal or the same outcome?

Jen: Interesting.

Pete: Did you see what I did there?

Jen: Multiple paths...yes, I do...that lead to the same outcome. Okay. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: I need to shout out, one of our listeners actually sent us this conundrum/question which was, paraphrasing, "What happens, or how might you think about navigating a decision when two options are presented in front of you, maybe even more, and they are both in alignment with or all of them are in alignment with where you want to go?" And I just think like, what an incredible conundrum to try and even unpack and offer some insight into. So, why don't we try?

Jen: Yeah. I mean, first of all, what a great position to be in because there's really no bad decision to be made when all of the roads in front of you are aligned with values and purpose, and they're all leading toward the place you said you wanted to go. I mean, isn't that the dream?

Pete: Right. Oh actually, though, that's...I feel like that's actually quite profound to remember, which is, you can't lose here.

Jen: Correct.

Pete: Ah, that's interesting. Yeah.

Jen: And listener, I don't know your personal situation but I have a feeling that you created this conundrum for yourself with a series of actions that were in alignment with your purpose and values.

Pete: Right. Right, right, right. So the first thing that comes to my mind when I read this conundrum is a metaphor that I'm sure I've shared forty-five times on this podcast, and I've definitely shared it with some of my clients more than forty-five times. So for those listening, I'm sorry in advance. They'll be laughing, I'm sure. Which is, that donkey metaphor that Derek Sivers has written about, that I've become obsessed with. So, imagine there is a donkey standing in a field. And on the left, there is a trough of hay. And on the right, there's a trough of water. And the donkey is hungry and thirsty, and can't decide which to tackle first. There's a fork in the road, and an outcome that he seeks, and he can't decide, "Do I eat the hay first, then drink the water? Or do I drink the water first, then eat the hay? Which one? Which one? Which one? Which one? Which one?" Sadly, unfortunately, in this fictional story, the donkey falls over and dies of dehydration and starvation, and what a disaster. And the learning is, or the metaphor is that the donkey could have had both, had he just picked one first. And this, Derek Sivers relates to human beings and our inability to think medium to long term. That we're so focused on what's right in front of us and making the right decision in the short term, that sometimes we get analysis-paralysis and don't make any decisions, or we try and do two things at once and then neither of them get done. And that if we just look up and extend our timeframe medium to longer term, what we might see is we could potentially do both. And you could have the hay, and then have the water. So I even wonder with this idea, is, you're faced with a fork in the road, it's a win-win situation like we said, if you pick one, it doesn't necessarily mean you'll never get to go down that other path.

Jen: Right.

Pete: And so, maybe that's also helpful.

Jen: Oh, it's so helpful. I mean, I hear scarcity mindset in the idea that, "Whichever path I don't choose means I lose that opportunity forever. Something like that will never come around my way again." So, yes. I find myself in this position with clients very often because most of my clients are freelance actors, who are always moving from gig to gig to gig to gig. And because they are auditioning so frequently, many find themselves in the position where they have multiple job offers on the table that conflict, and they have to make a decision. And I don't know that there's any one way to think about this, but it might be worth sharing how I've heard some of my clients talk about this. One immediately comes to mind who has had a really incredibly successful acting career, and the question he always asks himself is, "Which one scares me more?" And then, he does that one.

Pete: I love that question. Which one scares me?

Jen: Yeah. Which one makes me a little more scared of doing it?

Pete: Oh, that's good.

Jen: And yeah, it's that idea of running toward the fear, if all other things are weighted equally.

Pete: Right.

Jen: You know. Which, I guess brings us to another way of thinking about this, which is, is there a way that everything wouldn't be weighed equally? If you separate all the different elements of the different opportunities, whether it's money, or relationship, or time, or passion, or network, or location, or content, you know, whatever might be the individual elements, instead of weighing them all together, can you weigh them separately and see if that helps to tip the scales a bit?

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And then another client has a mantra, which is, "I will never repeat myself."

Pete: Oh.

Jen: And I love that. And again, it doesn't work for everyone. But for her, it's very much a, "If this experience feels familiar to me, I'm going to pick the other experience because I'm trying not to repeat myself."

Pete: Yeah. These are good ideas. And I feel compelled to remind myself/our listeners that this is kind of what we do in the podcast, which is trying to come up with a bunch of different ways into the same problem because one might resonate with you and one might not. So yeah, I like these ideas. I like these ideas, the one around fear in particular. I was thinking as you shared that of like, I wonder if another way of asking a similar question is, "Which one would I regret not doing?"

Jen: Mmm. Mm-hmm.

Pete: Or, "Which one, if I was seventy years old, would I look back on and say, 'I wish I had have done that one.' Like, which one is more likely to have created that response when you were older, looking back?" Because I feel like when we're older looking back, we forget the fear, which I think is a similar way into that same question.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: So I'm curious, when you hear this conundrum, what makes it a conundrum? Like you said this in the first two minutes of the podcast, you cannot lose here. So, why do we get hung up? What is it that makes this even a conundrum in the first place? I have some ideas about why that might be the case, but I'm curious for yours.

Jen: Well, the thing that immediately comes to mind is, you only live once. So, whatever decision you make, you can't turn time back to remake the decision. And perhaps that reality strikes a fear chord of, "But what if I make the wrong decision? Because I know I can't turn back the clock."

Pete: Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I could not agree more. I think that what's happening is, there is a fear of making the right decision, or a fear of making the wrong decision, perhaps. And that just immediately, to me, brings to mind Annie Duke and her incredible work that we reference all the time about decision making. And I'll put her book, Thinking in Bets, in the Box O' Goodies for the forty-seventh time. And the paraphrased version of her incredible book is that decisions and outcomes are different things. So when we make a decision, we make it based on the information and the facts that we have in front of us at that particular moment. And it is essentially an exercise in probability because there's always a percentage chance that the outcome we desire will not occur. So this conundrum, to me, feels like an attachment to the outcome, and attachment to it being "right". And I just think that, as we alluded to in the first two minutes, there is no “right” decision in this moment, there is only the options that are presented in front of us and how we might weigh them up in the moment to hopefully create the outcome we desire. But we can't beat ourselves up if we don't get there, if that makes sense, because it's separate to the decision making process itself.

Jen: Yes. I have found her work to be unbelievably helpful when making really important decisions, and also when making very silly small decisions.

Pete: Yeah. Like I mean, just a story to build on the metaphor of like the pause and the fork in the road, so earlier in the year, Tracey and I went on this incredible hike at a place called Cradle Mountain in Tasmania. And we walked all the way up the top of this mountain, it was unbelievable. We came back down, and there were two ways to go back down to the bottom of the mountain. And we chose what I thought would be the faster route. So, based on the information I had in front of me...you can see where this is going. Based on the information I had in front of me, which was the map, the kilometers to reach the destination we were going, and whatever else I can't remember that I had, in that moment, I said, "Okay, based on this information, I think the right decision is we go this way. Because we're both tired, we've done a big walk, let's get home as quick as possible." And what transpired is, the way that we went, while shorter in kilometers, was far steeper, far more treacherous, far slower of a pace that you could maintain. And so, the outcome was not the one we desired. It was longer, more excruciating, more painful, more blisters, we saw a snake, we almost got hit by a tree, it was a whole thing. So that being the, I think, a useful example of, we made a decision based on the two forks in the road to get to the same destination, it didn't quite work out, but the outcome was different to the decision at the start.

Jen: Yes. Oh my gosh, will you share a photo from that hike in the Box O' Goodies? Because when you sent me those photos, I almost fell out of my chair. How gorgeous.

Pete: Yes. Yes, I will pop it in the Box O' Goodies.

Jen: This conversation is also reminding me of a book called Designing Your Life, which is written by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. They are professors at Stanford University.

Pete: Is this based on the class?

Jen: This is based on the class.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It's really, really good. And the thing that I love about it, is it basically gives you permission to imagine many futures for yourself. Like, fully imagine all the different possible futures you might have before deciding to take the first step on the path toward one of them. And in many cases, you find that there are overlapping possibilities. Which, I think this listener who is saying that they're standing at this crossroads where there are two opportunities that are completely aligned with purpose and values and basically lead to the goals, it sounds like maybe this would be a useful resource for that listener.

Pete: Definitely. I love that exercise. I think that the shocking thing for me is how much they overlap, often.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: Truly.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: I'm thinking back to...gosh, I haven't thought about this in, oh my gosh, like almost twenty years. So almost twenty years ago, I had a situation when I was still an actor where I had received three conflicting job offers at the same time. One was to do a film. One was a workshop of a new musical. And one was a production of a musical I had done several times before. And my agent at the time, who was just so amazing, really talked me through...not, whether or not any of these three things was going to be right for me right now, but where did I ultimately want to go in my career? And based on where I wanted to go, could I think less about whether it was a workshop or production or film, and ask myself, "Who's going to be in the room collaborating? And what are some of the things I would be learning? How would I be able to set myself up now, to aim with more specificity toward the places I wanted to go?" And because of that conversation with her, and really getting clear on, "Down the road, where do I really want to be headed," it went from such an excruciating decision to like a no-brainer.

Pete: Oh, interesting.

Jen: And we passed on two of the offers, and took one.

Pete: Huh. Yeah, you made me think of the idea of, "Is there someone who has already started down one of these paths that you could talk to and get more information from, to help with that decision?" Like in the metaphor of Tracey and I hiking, if there was another hiker at that fork who had just come from one of the directions, I would have said, "Oh, how was that path? Was it treacherous? Was it as steep as it looked in the map?" But it didn't look that steep, and it was. So like, this idea of, "Is there someone else halfway down the path, or like in your example, someone you could bounce off the possibilities with, that helps us gather more information so that we can make a decision?"

Jen: Yeah. And this is making me think of something else, too. So I'm, right now, in the process of registering people for my summer coaching program, the Reboot program at the studio. And I give all the information on the website, and then I say, "You know, if you're still not sure,"...because it's a huge commitment of a program, it's a beast. "If you're still not sure and you want to talk, let's jump on a Zoom call together." And to schedule the Zoom call, they have to fill out answers to some questions like, "What makes you think this is right for you? Where are you feeling challenged? What makes you think that this program is going to help you solve your challenges?" And there are so many people who, after filling it out, the last thing they type is, "I'm not sure if I even need to jump on the call anymore, because I have so much clarity now."

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: So sometimes just getting to your journal and really writing it out, or going for a walk and turning on, you know, I'm the big fan of turn on your Voice Memo app and talk to yourself...sometimes just the act of talking to yourself can provide the clarity, rather than sitting and stewing. Actually working through, trying to answer questions.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I feel like what we're describing, which we've said multiple times, I think is, in order to make a tough decision, let's gather the information that we need to help us make that decision. There's always going to be information we don't have available. There is always going to be an unknown. But we have to first give ourselves as much time/permission to have the information that we need in order to make a decision. That information could be something we come up with ourselves by journaling or walking and talking to yourself. It could be talking to someone else. It could be looking at a book, like the book that you mentioned, and going through their exercises. There's all these different ways to help ourselves gather information, so that we can make a decision that, in the moment, feels well informed.

Jen: You know, one other option that I really love is the one that this listener took, which is, reach out to Pete and Jen and get them to talk about it for you.

Pete: Let them thrash for twenty minutes, and maybe it'll be helpful.

Jen: But truly, we love doing this. So listeners, if there are things on your mind that you want to hear us unpack, hello@thelongandtheshortpodcast.com That's all it takes.

Pete: That's all it takes. We don't promise silver bullet answers, but we do promise to think out loud and throw multiple suggestions at you. Which hopefully, one of them will be the path that leads to the outcome that you desire.

Jen: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.