Brian Gubernick shares a decision-making framework: ask yourself how you'll feel tomorrow about the choice you're about to make. He uses it to cut impulsivity and regret, walking through two examples: pushing through pain in an endurance event and having a hard conversation with his daughter.
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Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. I want to talk about decision-making, one of my favorite topics as a leader, as a father, as someone that hopes to influence the thoughts of others. I am faced with making many decisions, as I'm sure you are as well. And I'd like to make as many great decisions as possible. When I'm faced with a tough choice, there's something I like to do, and I'm not quite sure where I picked it up or why I started doing it, but I thought it'd be something worth sharing with our No Days Off Nation here today. When I'm faced with a tough call, I like to ask myself, How will I feel tomorrow about this decision I'm about to make right now? How will I feel tomorrow about this decision that I'm about to make right now? Now, I do this because I want to know, or I want to guess at, whether I'll be happy about this decision once some time passes, or if I might regret my decision. Now, this approach that I've taken, I think it considers how I'm going to feel about the decision in the future. And I, I've learned, for me at least, it's been a great strategy for making more thoughtful choices. There's some key lessons and I think some benefits, at least for me and maybe for you, with respect to this message or this method, I should say. Number 1, future orientation and emotional impact. Like, for me, I am projecting myself into the future, and in doing so, I can better understand, or attempt to better understand, the long-term emotional impact of my decision. So this helps me assess whether the choice I'm making aligns with my long-term happiness and the things that I value, or if it actually might lead to regret. So I'm projecting myself into the future. There's this future orientation, and I'm trying to determine what's the emotional impact of this. The next benefit of this method for me is it helps— and I need all the help I can get— it helps in reducing impulsive decision-making. It reduces my impulse. I'm taking a moment to consider how I'm going to feel later, and this counteracts this impulsive nature that I have sometimes. In other words, it encourages me to be more deliberate in my thinking, and it leads, at least for me, to better outcomes. This was not the way I always operated. It's probably something I started doing as I matured in life, but it served me well. In addition to, you know, putting, you know, giving myself this future orientation and understanding the emotional impact, as well as reducing impulsive decision-making, I think it gives me a degree of, uh, objectivity. I would say more objective perspective. Like, I'm imagining my future self, and I think in doing so, it gives me this more objective perspective. Like, I'm thinking about myself asking, gosh, how do I feel about that conversation? I'm detached then from the immediate emotions, from the, from the immediate bias. And I'd like to think it makes me a bit more rational, rational in my assessment rather than emotional. Or basing things on feelings. The last thing I'll say around this, in encouraging this sort of reflection, for me, probably the thing that I wanna most limit more than most anything else in life is regret. I don't wanna live a life that has regret. And so this exercise for me, most importantly, evaluates potential regret. And it allows me to make choices that minimize the likelihood of future disappointment. This for me leads to more satisfying and regret-free, I would say, decisions. And as a result, I think I'm making more confident decisions, more reflective decisions, and it's become a rather practical application for me. So the specific questions that I'll ask myself: will this decision more or less help me achieve my long-term goals? Or will I feel proud of this choice in the future? Just another way to word the original question, which is how am I going to feel about this tomorrow? How will I feel about this decision that I'm about to make? How am I going to feel about it tomorrow? Will it help me achieve my long-term goals? Will I feel proud of this choice in the future? This is a decision-making framework that I use. Now, where have I used it? Lots of different places. Lots of different places. Things that are, you know, rather insignificant in the grand scheme and things that are rather significant. Some things that come to mind for me, I've been in specific endurance events where I was in a lot of pain and wasn't sure if I can endure or persevere. And I've asked myself, well, how am I going to feel about myself if I choose to tap out right now? How am I going to feel tomorrow about this decision? And of course, you know the answer. I'm going to regret that move without question. Therefore, I'm not going to do it. Recently, uh, I, I was working with my daughter on something. We had some challenges and we're working through some, some things, and, and I was, uh, trying to figure out like what's the best path forward. And I had to have a pretty frank and direct conversation with her. And before having that frank and direct conversation, with the consequences already outlined in my mind, like where we were going, I had to ask myself, how am I going to feel about this conversation we're going to have? How am I going to feel about it tomorrow? Am I going to be content with the way I handled this, or am I going to regret any aspect of it? And guess what? I said, you know what, I'm going to feel pretty good about it tomorrow. This is the right move to make. So, I was more confident moving forward. And even though it was a hard and difficult conversation, it was necessary. And when I projected out to the future and worked my way backwards, I had even more confidence. So, you can see how this shows up all over the place. And I want to encourage you to leverage this model or at least test it out. As you go about your day today, you're going to make certain decisions. Some impactful, some a little less significant. I want you to ask yourself, or at least give it a shot, how am I going to feel tomorrow about this decision I'm about to make? Are you going to feel happy and content once time passes, or are you going to potentially have some degree of regret or confusion at the very minimum? There's some lessons there, and I think that in doing this, in doing this exercise and leveraging this framework, it will aid you in making even better decisions. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.
