The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 139 - Decision Making

Transcript:

Jen: Hello there, Peter Shepherd.

Pete: Hello there, Jen...nifer Waldman.

Jen: Didn't know if you wanted to see my full name, huh?

Pete: I was trying to decide. Jen or Jennifer? And I sort of went, "Jen...nifer."

Jen: That's so funny. Because the thing I want to talk about today is deciding, making decisions. In the last couple of weeks, I've noticed a serious trend in the conversations I've been having with my clients about how challenging it is for them to make decisions right now with the world "opening up", and really needing to put some edges on the sandbox. So I wanted to unpack this with you today, and hear some of your insights, and share some of my own.

Pete: Please. Please, please, please. This feels very relevant to some recent episodes on challenging assumptions, and I'm sure there's some parallels. So, let's dig in. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Okay, okay, okay.

Pete: Alright.

Jen: Now, for a little context.

Pete: Please. Please.

Jen: I mentioned this on last week's episode...as the theatre industry starts to reopen, my clients are finding themselves at a bit of a crossroads, where they're like, "Oh gosh, I don't know which path to take. I made some decisions early in the pandemic, and I thought I had committed to those things. But now things are opening up, and what do I do?" And I thought that the thing that was missing from a lot of these conversations was a real foundation of vision and values. So this month at the studio, I've dedicated to the theme of setting the foundation. And we've been doing a lot of work on, "Who are you? What do you believe? What's your Why? What's your mission, vision, values, etc.?" And, we've been essentially creating what I've been calling an artistic constitution. Each week, I'm like taking them through a series of prompts, and we're arriving at the next layer of the artistic constitution. (I'd be happy to read mine, if you think it would be helpful, like what I've worked on so far.) But basically the point is, it's important to have a strategy for making decisions. But if that strategy is not rooted in who you are, and what you believe, and what you value, then what good is the strategy? So I've been trying to help them lay this foundation for guiding the quality of decisions before we actually dig into, "and the strategy for making decisions is...". So, I'm curious to hear your initial reaction to that.

Pete: Oh, I have so many. I think that the first thing I want to talk about is...so what I hear you sharing is, "I'm coming up with, or helping folks come up with a personal process, or a personal practice, or a personal filter for which to put decisions through," which I think is amazing, and I really want to unpack it. And I want to start by just like...I'm sure we've talked about this at some point, but I'm just going to say it again. I think the most important aha moment I've had as it relates to decision making goes back to Annie Duke and her incredible book, Thinking In Bets, where she very, very logically and very obviously points out (obvious, now that you've read it, Pete), obviously points out that decisions and outcomes are separate.

Jen: Yep.

Pete: A beautiful decision doesn't necessarily lead to a beautiful outcome, and vice versa. And she has all these beautiful, great, wonderful examples of, you know, NFL plays, and poker hands, and all these great examples...I'm not going to try and articulate them here because I won't do it justice, so I'll put a resource in the Box O' Goodies. But the point being, like if you make a decision where there's an 80% chance of it getting an outcome, for example...the probability suggests there's 80% chance, you've got all the information, you're like really happy with and aligned with that decision, there's still a 20% chance that the outcome isn't going to be desirable. And so we need to, as much as possible (I think this is so hard, but so important), just get clear that a good decision making process and practice doesn't necessarily lead to great outcomes. It's not guaranteed. It can assist. It can set you up for success, in that it's going to increase your likelihood of it getting a good outcome, but it doesn't guarantee. So I just wanted to start there, because I think that then makes your constitution even more important. Because it's kind of all we have. I can't control the outcome, so I need to have a process, or a constitution, or a practice that is so unique to me, so aligned with who I am that whatever happens, as long as I've followed that, I'm going to be okay.

Jen: Yes, yes, yes. And P.S., I literally just started reading How To Decide, which is her most recent book.

Pete: The follow-up.

Jen: So, there you go. There you go.

Pete: Very cool.

Jen: I haven't finished it yet, so I can't comment yet.

Pete: I haven't got it yet.

Jen: It's exciting to me to dig into it, because I know you love her work so much. Okay, so here's the thing that I love about what you just said. When you have landed on a belief system, or a guiding principle (or whatever you want to call it) that you use to make all decisions, and that this guiding principle, or constitution, or personal statement (or whatever) is rooted in the truth of what matters to you, then you can accept the outcomes even if you don't like them, because you were true. But I can also imagine a scenario where you step away from your values, you step out of alignment with the things you believe because you see an opportunity, and then you don't get the outcome, so now not only do you have a bad outcome, you feel like crap about yourself.

Pete: Yeah. I feel called out. Yep, definitely.

Jen: Oh, okay. Okay.

Pete: I just feel like that's happened to me at some point in my life, for sure. I know exactly what you mean. You go back to, "Okay, wow. That didn't go to plan. So, what happened?" And then you look at the decision making process, and you go, "Ah, why did I make that decision? I was influenced by something else that went out of my constitution." So yeah, I just feel called out. I feel like everybody's had a moment like that. Surely. Surely, I'm not alone.

Jen: Oh, no, you're just completely alone. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Of course, we've all had those moments. We've all had those moments. So circling back for a second to the power of writing this down and naming...the thing that's coming up for me in the middle of my sentence is our mutual friend, Dana Ray, whose whole business is about naming. And she's very brilliant. So, I'll pop her in the Box O' Goodies. Not her literally, but her website. Can you imagine? You open your email, and Dana Ray bursts out of your computer. That would be funny. No, but the power of putting words to all of this in a concise statement...we've been working on this for three weeks. And what I have to show for it is maybe four or five sentences, like it's a single paragraph. But when I read it to myself, I know where I stand and I am immediately pointing back to my north star, like immediately, and there's something very powerful about that.

Pete: So I guess at this point, I should ask, do you want to read it, or a paragraph from it, or, like...?

Jen: It's only one paragraph.

Pete: Great.

Jen: So, sure. I mean, I can read it. Okay. Hold on, where did I...?

Pete: Maybe we can unpack, in your particular example, what are the kinds of questions that you used to help you write it? I'd be curious about that.

Jen: Yeah. Yeah, happy to do that. Okay. So, here is the shitty first draft of my artistic constitution.

Pete: Nice disclaimer.

Jen: "I am an artist, therefore, I put humanity first. My mission is to give artists the tools and techniques they need to do their best work, and exist at the edge of their potential. I'm building toward an industry that places a higher value on artistic contributions, creates equitable spaces, and takes responsibility for the impact of our stories. I celebrate the individuality of every artist, seek out the most nuanced details of every story, and expose the beautiful messiness of being human."

Pete: Mmm, mmm, mmm. Yes, please. That is good. That is good. I'm sure there was structure, processes, questions behind this.

Jen: Yep.

Pete: Could you share?

Jen: Sure. So to begin with, is claiming the artist identity. For me and for a lot of my clients, that's really important, is, to lead with the art. And every one of us has a different definition of what art is. For me, an artist is someone who renders the human experience. So we created an, "I am an artist, therefore..." statement. So mine uses my definition of art, therefore I put humanity first.

Pete: Nice. So, you begin by claiming your identity. Okay, cool. Next.

Jen: Which might not work for everyone. Because, you know, "artist" is very much an identity. I don't know that everyone identifies as much with the kind of work they do. But artists (generally speaking, I'm sure there are exceptions), but it's really hard for us to disassociate our identity from our artistry.

Pete: Yeah, I think that's a great call out. I remember, probably about a year ago, where we talked about my friend, the accountant, who lost his job, he didn't lose his identity.

Jen: Right.

Pete: But artists were going through a process of like, "I think I lost my identity." So, it's a really good point.

Jen: Yes. And then we did mission, vision, and values. And frankly, I'm not that thrilled with my second sentence. I'd like to remove the words, "My mission is," so that I'm not so on the nose, but the rest of the sentence I like. So to get to the mission, we had to ask ourselves, "What am I actually trying to do? And what is the present moment contribution I'm trying to make?" You know, the mission is not about the future state. The mission is about the current contribution, and what the work is currently trying to do. And then the vision statement is future-focused, and this is where I'm talking about what kind of an industry I want to help build. So the mission is the present contribution, which is contributing toward the desired future state, which is the vision. And then, the final piece is the values. And we've talked about this on previous episodes, values in action is really the key. Like just knowing your values, like that's all well and good but unless you can put them into practice and take action, they're just nice words. So to get there, I had to ask myself questions about experiences I've had where I felt I was operating at my best, and what values were present in those experiences. And I also asked questions about things that I witnessed as an audience member where I felt Art (with a capital A) was living up to its best, and what values were present there. So that's how I landed on individuality, and specificity of detail, and messiness, like turning things inside out.

Pete: Mmm. Mmm. Thank you for sharing. I think this is really, really helpful. The thing I really like in particular is...there were two sentences. One of them started with, "I'm building," and the other one started with, "I celebrate."

Jen: Mmm, yeah.

Pete: And I just, I was thinking about those two sentences in particular, as it relates to decision making. And I could see a world where a decision comes into your life, or an opportunity, or a situation, and you're able to look at that and go, "Does this help me with what I'm building? And does this align with what I celebrate?" I just heard those two words, and I was like, "That's so perfect for a decision making filter."

Jen: Yes. So you are pointing to really the point I was hoping to make with this episode, that I hadn't quite gotten around to. So, thank you for this.

Pete: Great.

Jen: You know, there are a lot of decisions in the very immediate future that at least the people I'm engaging with have to be making. And so when I look at my statement here, and I see that I have said, "I am building toward an industry that places a higher value on artistic contributions," that means I cannot make a decision to work in a space where artists are underpaid for their work, or asked to work for free. I cannot work within that space, because that goes against my constitution. Or, "I'm building toward an industry that creates equitable spaces," so if I am an artist negotiating a contract, how can I ensure that the thing that I'm agreeing to is creating a space that is equitable? Well, I could demand that there is some sort of rider in my contract that speaks to that. I could ask who else has already agreed to be a part of this project. I could ask what sort of initiatives their organization is taking to create and promote equity within the work that they do. So I can't just sit back and say like, "I hope someone else does this work," because I've named it as important to me. And then I can look at the options in front of me and use my decision making strategy (a la Annie Duke), but whatever decision I make, I'm comfortable, in fact, proud of the way I'm showing up to make the decision.

Pete: Yes. Oof, that's good. That's good, that's good, that's good. You made me realize in the moment, I have a kind of a micro version of this that I'm recognizing. So I think at one point I mentioned this idea that I really resonated with (it's actually on the fridge here at our place) that says, "Clear mind. Healthy body. House full of love," as like some sort of value set to work towards, or principles to think about, not just cultivating today, but also in the future. So I think I'm constantly building towards a world where I have a clear mind, a healthy body, and a house full of love. And I also think that's actually what I'd try and celebrate too, like they're almost the same. But like on a really, really micro level, if I'm deciding in the day whether I go to the gym or whether I sit on the couch and watch TV, you know, which one is feeding a clear mind, a healthy body, and a house full of love? Going to the gym. And so, that decision becomes easier. I'm actually at the point where this is not even conscious, I'm just realizing in this moment that this is what happens. Or if I'm deciding, "Do I have a burger? Or do we cook the leftover vegetables and chicken in the fridge?" Well, healthy body, you know, clear mind, like, you kind of got to go with the healthy option. So I'm just like, I'm starting to see this everywhere, just based on this conversation already.

Jen: Huh. And I just want to share my reaction.

Pete: Please.

Jen: And I want to share that if you are sitting on the couch alone, that's one thing. But if you're sitting on the couch and snuggling Tracy, that's a house full of love.

Pete: That's true.

Jen: That's a house full of love.

Pete: It's true, it's true. The different lenses we can look at to make those decisions justifiable. I love it. I love it.

Jen: Yep. I mean, we're joking about it, but it's actually true. That you can take something that would be unhealthy, or out of alignment, or, you know, whatever words you want to put on it, and move it to a place where it is healthy, and in alignment. I can't remember if I've ever shared this on the podcast before, but for me, this is the condition I try to create when I'm watching TV, which I do very, very rarely and never alone.

Pete: Yes.

Jen: So I will sit with my daughter, and we'll watch some baking competitions together because she loves to bake. And that feels like quality time. And then we'll try to, you know, replicate something we saw on the show in our own kitchen. Or my husband Mark and I will...well I'll say, "binge watch" for us is like watch one episode per week for a while. But we will commit to watching a show, but we'll do it together. So, that takes something that would have felt sort of out of alignment for me and brings it into alignment.

Pete: That's a perfect example of, I guess, a personal constitution and how that feeds into decision making. Very cool. Very cool. Alright.

Jen: Oh, wait, wait, wait. You just said, "personal constitution". And this is the point I think that's really important.

Pete: Please.

Jen: Is, my artistic constitution is specific to my art. And it doesn't mean that all the things that I value and the vision I'm building toward doesn't belong in the rest of my life. Of course it does. But when I think about like my personal constitution, I might have values represented around how I'm raising my daughter, for example, that might not be in my artistic constitution. So, you can have more than one.

Pete: Definitely, definitely. I think the one I shared around, "Clear mind. Healthy body," that was kind of a personal constitution. But you're right. I have a different one for picking projects, or deciding who to work with and who to collaborate with. So, that's a really great call out. I feel like I'm going to have a library of constitutions.

Jen: I know.

Pete: "Let me just reach for the constitution of decision making on projects." Like a librarian. Alright, well, this has been juicy. This has been juicy. So, what do we take? Are we encouraging...? I think I'm encouraging myself, but also others, to think about how they might craft their own (it's only a paragraph), their own constitution, whether it's work related, whether it's life related, whether it's both, that will help them ultimately make decisions that are more in alignment with who they are. Which then, to your earlier point, makes it easier to get comfortable with the fact that the outcome may or may not be the desired one.

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