Whatever You Do, Don’t Just Trust Your Gut — Try This Instead

Today, on the Becoming youg podcast, we're going to talk all about the most important thing in the world, and that is Pierre, my little dachshund, sitting on my lap. But actually, it's a lie. We're not going to talk about Pierre, although we could. But I want to talk instead about something that all of us get wrong way too often, including me, by the way, as you will soon hear. And that is decision making. Decision making. Here's the headline. Decision making is so easy to get wrong. It is, but it's also so easy to fix. It's so easy. We just have to stop, stop, stop following the stupidest advice in the world, which is just listen to your gut. Ah. Oh, my God, that is such bad advice. It's terrible. Trust me, and I will explain why I feel that way. But hooray. I have very good advice for you on the pod today. So you have to stick around and not just to look at Pierre, who's so cute, because in 23 minutes or so, you're going to have a simple new way to make decisions. And you're going to want to kiss me. Or not. Maybe kiss me. Maybe you want to kiss Pierre or you want to fist bump me, which I'll also take. That's great. But along the way to the fist bumping, you're going to get to hear about the time that I was publicly humiliated by my children in front of 1000 asshats. And also one of my worst decisions ever in my life. You're going to get to hear about that one. So get out your popcorn. Hi there. Hello. I'm Susie Welch, and this is Becoming youg, the podcast where we help you answer that tiny, completely inconsequential question. What should I do with my life now? You may be wondering at this moment. Wait, why are we discussing decision making on becoming you now? What's the connection? What's the connection between finding your purpose in life and decision making? And I'm very happy to report that the connection is really tight. In fact, it's hand in glove. Because becoming you helps you figure out your purpose. But actually, in pursuing that purpose and in achieving that purpose, it is going to involve decision after decision after decision. Do I take this job or that one? Do I move to this city or stay, stay put? Do I wait out a hard situation in my job or I get the heck out? Even stuff like, do I marry this person who doesn't share my values and my purpose because I love them or not? You know, everything in life, frankly, is A decision even if you're already living your purpose, even if you are. And by the way, living in your purpose, congratulations, that's hard and it's wonderful. But life is just one long series of decisions which are ours to make or hours to blow. Isn't that true? Isn't it? I think it is. And here's what's amazing. Even though decisions are so important, decision making is an art. It's a science, it's a discipline. Even all those things are true. It's not taught. It's not taught by our parents, really. I mean, most mothers and fathers, and I would include myself in this, are worried about teaching their kids how to read and how to drive and how to make friends, how to get into college. But they're not like, I really need to teach Tommy how to decide. I mean, raise your hand if your parents actually said, going to teach you how to decide. All right? A lot of times you just pick up decision making by how your parents made decisions, and that's not always the best way, Right? And then, you know, look, full stop. It's not taught in high school, where you learn very essential things, like how to calculate the volume of a cylinder or name the Roman God of agriculture. I learned that. I mean, that's really useful, right? And it's rarely. Decision making is rarely taught in college. It's. It's definitely not a required course, and it's not really even taught enough in business school. What ends up happening with decision making in real life is that everyone agrees. You know, it's like the conventional wisdom. Just go with your gut. I mean, I was making a decision the other day, very, very tough decision, big implications and so forth, and I called a friend who's really smart, and you know what he said to me? Just listen to your heart, go with your gut. And I like this person very much. So I did not scream in agony. I just said, okay, thanks. Thanks for the input. I mean, it makes. But it makes me want to scream every time I hear it, and here's why. Research, excellent research, by the way, would tell you that gut decisions are right 50% of the time. 5. 0, you mean? You might as well just flip a coin. Same level of accuracy on making a decision using your gut, but it's just pattern recognition. A potential client comes into you and you talk and you hear their story and they're a startup or whatever, and you think, okay, I've had 15 clients like this one, and in the end, you know what? They never pay. And then you look at that Pattern and you pass on their business. I've been there, I've done that. Or say you meet somebody, you know, dating, and you really like them, but they keep canceling your dates, your meetups, and at the last minute and you think, you know what? This happened with the last three people I actually eventually had to break up with. And I'm going to step back now before it's too late. Why? I've seen this pattern. I've been there, I've done that. But in life, in real life, not everything is a pattern. A decision becomes hard almost by definition because we've never seen anything like it before. So what good is pattern recognition when there's no pattern to recognize? So this is why, when gut, there's no usefulness of gut. Because you need a pattern for gut to work. This is why you, you need a decision making system. You need a decision making system. Now, I happen to have learned this very important statement. It's not like I came out of the womb or in high school was saying, I need a decision making system. And I learned it in the worst, ugliest way. And it was, this is when I got embarrassed by my children in front of 1,000 people who I'm not very fond of. But I learned a very important lesson because of them. And the story goes like this. I was at a point in my life, I was in my late 30s, I had four children, and I was working full time, 60 hours a week at the Harvard Business Review. I was getting a new roof put on my house because it was leaking like a sieve. And in the middle of this mishigos, okay, I got a call from a insurance company that asked me if I would come give a lecture in Hawaii to a thousand insurance executives who are going there to golf and have fun. But they thought it'd be really cool to have the, an editor of the Harvard Business Review come in and lecture these individuals in the middle of their golfing vacation about the history of management and my lucky name. My number came up and I said yes, because they were going to pay me $5,000. And when you're getting a new roof put on, you'll take money from anywhere, you'll stand on the corner and you'll shake a tin cup. When I am Dr. Driving and I see somebody with scaffolding in the house and they're getting a roof put on, I think, oh, those poor, poor people. I mean, it is, that's, that's a lot of dough. Okay, So I got this call to go to y right And I said, yep, I'll be there. And I'm gonna bring two of my four children that will. That will make this all work out. And they're like little adults. You won't even notice they're there. They weren't crazy about it. And my kids got there. They got sick from the plane ride. Then I put too much sunscreen on one of my kids and he got sunscreen poisoning. I mean, it was. It was a shit show. And I was living very reactively in those days. I was trying very hard to look like the woman who could do it all, all at the same time. It looked like that. But, oh, my God, on the inside, it was disasterville. I get to Hawaii and then the day comes to give the speech about the history of management. And I put my kids, I warehoused them in a hula dancing class. And as I walked away, my son, who's now 35 and loves me dearly, gave me a look, though not pretty. So anyway, I got up and I gave the speech. It was probably the most boring speech in the history of humankind, but I was doing as I was told. I was telling the history of management and. Which is interesting, by the way, but not in my telling. And in the middle of the speech, my kids made a jailbreak from the hula dancing class. And they came running down the center aisle of the convention hall screaming my name. And so everybody just looked at me the old fashioned way with complete disgust and disdain. Nobody thought this was cute. Nobody thought, oh, that poor woman tried to do it all. Oh, God, I've been there. Felt that this was just a bunch of guys saying, I gave up golf to watch this terrible speech. And then see this woman's children run down the center aisle screaming her name. This is terrible. And it was terrible. I ended the speech, I ran off the stage, they were hugging my legs, screaming, mommy, Mommy, Mommy. And I was confronted with the fact that in that moment, I was an epic failure. I had to learn that the hard way. So when I went back to my room and I just felt like everything was falling apart at once. And I was sitting on the balcony of this hotel room and my kids were finally asleep. I drugged them with candy and Disney movies. And I basically was sitting there and I thought, what am I going to do? And I thought, I am going to actually slow my life down. It's going too fast. It's out of control. I'm going to start facing each day decision by decision. I'm going to just start looking at each decision. And instead of recklessly making a decision using my gut. I'm going to stop, and I'm going to consider all of my options, and I'm going to think about their impact in the immediate Future. That was 10 minutes in the foreseeable future, 10 months, say, and in the life I want to create. I gave that 10 years. I started to think about this immediately as this idea of 10, 10, 10. And I was just going to slow my life down and just make every decision that faced me. I was going to just take five minutes and just do this little system. Because things were so bad they could only get better if I put some kind of rigor and discipline around it. I was trying to save my life. Frankly, I was trying to save my own life. So in that moment, I got this little life raft. The next morning, I got up, I got the kids dressed, we were going to the airport. And I had to make a decision about whether or not we were going to stop at a little thing that the kids wanted to do on the way to the airport. It was like a little. Little aquarium. And normally I would have, like, just made that decision on the fly. The kids really wanted to do it. I think they wanted to get some toys that were there. And instead, I actually pulled out this little tool. And I thought, well, in 10 minutes, if we stop, we might miss the plane, but the kids will stop screaming at me. In 10 months, they won't remember one way or another if we stopped at the aquarium. It's a moot point. And in 10 years, I don't want to raise bratty children, which is giving into every single one of those of their whims. And I said, we're not stopping. And they were like, what? Because they were used to, at that point, me just doing everything based in the moment, everything by default, if they just ratcheted up the volume loudly enough, I would bend. And I knew in this. And then that they said, what? And I said, yeah, we're not doing it. And I quickly kind of explained why. And I said, we gotta get to the airport on time, and mommy's taking control of things here. And they were stunned. And, like, they were actually stunned into silence, sort of. I was, too. And I thought, hey, that wasn't so bad. And then we got to the airport, and there was another, like, kind of moment where I had to make a decision about something. And I, like, literally stopped. And I applied this little rubric, okay, if you will, this little system. And it worked again. And then I got to work the next day when I went back to work and I started using it in all sorts of work decisions. Like, one time, they asked me to come speak to the board. And it was on the same weekend that my son was in a karate competition. And I'll tell you something, at that point, I made every decision on the basis of work. I was a person who. I still am a person who values work very highly. I value achievement very highly at that point. And they said, why don't you come speak to the board? This will be incredibly good for your profile. When your promotion comes up, the board will know you. And I went back to my desk and I wrote down 10, 10 and 10. And I had two options. Speak to the board, not speak to the board. And in 10 minutes, it would be terrible for my career. It would be very awkward with my boss. I would be signaling I was a person who was not available. I'd be signaling that I was a person who valued my children more than work. These were all things you didn't want to signal in those days. In 10 months, it was still going to have an impact. They would remember it. I was probably going to be up for promotion in 10 months. And they would say, she didn't speak to the board. That was the downside. And in 10 years, my achievement was so high, I might actually miss a promotion if I didn't do this. And that might actually derail my whole career. But then I thought about it, you know, on the other side, in 10 minutes, if I didn't do it, I would make my child so sad if I didn't go. And I'd make him so happy if I did, because I missed a lot. And I thought, I have to be there because I have to signal to him how much he matters to me in this mishegos. And I had to think about all my different values. And actually, at the end of the day, I sorted them all out. I thought about my values. More on that later. And I went to my boss and I said, this is probably going to come as a huge shock to you, but I've decided that I'm not going to speak to the board. And then I walked her through my reasoning using this 10-10-10 tool. And later, I did get the promotion down the road, by the way. And when they gave me the promotion, I said, wow, I thought I wasn't going to get it after what happened with the karate incident and the board incident. And she said, actually, it was your very reasoned, rational explanation using that 10-10-10 tool that convinced us that you had your Life under control. And I was like, hell yeah. And the thing about 10-10-10 is it's a nifty little system. It slows you down and it requires you to look at all of your options and all of your consequences. It's like a forced data dump, but it really works so much better and actually works perfectly. I mean, it works as it's supposed to be working if you apply your values. You kind of have to know your values to make this whole system work really well. So, hello, Yes, I said values. We are back into becoming you territory. I mean, that's the beautiful thing about becoming you as a methodology on the road to understanding your purpose. Becoming you uncovers your values. You know, 10-10-10 asks you to write down all of your options, or at least catalog them in your mind, and then to look at the consequences in these three time frames. Immediate, foreseeable future, long term future. And it's so much easier when you know your values and then you have to compare them to that, to your values at the end. And at that point, at that point, you don't even have to make the decision because the decision presents itself like the rising sun. It's so obvious. Okay, so that's how it works. That's the decision making system. I mean, I teach it at. It's taught, it's taught in colleges and universities around the country. I mean, I wrote a book about this in 2009 called 10-10-10 and it's going to be reissued actually coming up next March. If 101010 doesn't turn your crank, fine. All I would say is find another decision making system. But if you decide that you like 1010 10, and if you want to know a little bit more about it, just Google it, go to ChatGPT, you can find out a ton more. There's examples all over the place. And I would love you to try it on a decision today. I'd love you just to try it on a decision today. And I want you to write me about the decision. I mean, seriously, I'd love you to send it. Send me a DM on Instagram or email me@hellouziewelch.com and maybe we'll use your story in the podcast. I definitely want to read about your decision and how you use 1010 10. I love that. I love it when I teach it. And students have a choice of a decision making system to use for a big business problem. And if you use 1010 10, tell me about it and just know that you can do better than a coin Toss when it comes to the stuff in your life, if you have a decision making system. Now look, I want to leave you with a strategy that I actually use myself to keep myself honest with decision making. And it's a strategy which you might think is a little bit nutty, but it's my kind of nutty because it works. I'm all about strategies that work, and we'll get to those in a moment. This is becoming you. Hello again, I'm Susie Welch. Let's get back to it. All right, now look, I don't want to portray myself as a person who makes nothing but perfect decisions, okay? I do not, because I'm a human. But I strive to be an ever better human. And I bet you do too. And so what I'm saying here today is that one immediate way to do that is to stop making decisions with just one of your organs, your gut, okay? And use your brain too. Because it's awfully nice when you say that we have both organs to use our gut and our brains, and their is a reason for that. So what I'd love to do now is to finish this podcast and thank you so much for being with us with two loves and a hate from this week. Okay, let's start with the hate. So I got an email from a student the other day, and she said, professor Welch, I'm going to be late for class. I'm a ICU nurse and I have a patient that is presenting in a very, very complicated way. And I know you, classes, mandatory attendance, but I'm making this hard call that I need to stay with this patient through the resolution of this case. And of course I was thinking, I'm not going to be mad at a student who stays with a patient. And she was a pediatric nurse, by the way, so I was fine. She shows up at the halfway of class and she says, by the way, hi, I'm the nurse who told you I was going to be late for class. And I did finish the case. And I said you were 100% not going to have any marks off for this. And she said, oh, thank you so much. I said, thank you for what you do. And then I said, by the way, how's the kid? I shouldn't have done it. Why did I do it? And she said, oh, we thought something was wrong with his vision, but ends up he has brain cancer. I said, I'm so sorry. She said, I'm really sorry too. I said, how is he? And she said, she said, better than his parents. So I just. We Said, okay, blah, blah, blah. She left. And, you know, the world is filled with really hard stuff like this. I hated this happening to this family. I hate that this happens to families. Every day I'm holding these people in my heart. I think every day we're confronted with stuff that's hard like this. We can't get away from it. This is life. This is the world. Things that are unfair and very painful happen. I hate it when it happens. And I think life is about finding a way to mitigate the sadness and the hard stuff. I mean, this is part of why I love people finding their purpose, is that hard stuff is still going to happen. It's still going to happen. But when you feel exquisitely alive and what you're doing with your life, it's a balance to it. And I want to say, by the way, besides hating this story because of its details, I love that nurse, I love that student, and I love that they're getting care in a great hospital in New York. But overall, I'm just thinking about that family today. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bring you down. But I think that, you know, life does coming you in its details is about real life, and real life happens. And I don't want to. I don't. I hate that phony baloney stuff that we just need to be optimistic. I like being optimistic. I am an optimistic person. But real life happens, by the way. And so knowing your purpose and living your purpose becomes ever more urgent, doesn't it? All right, that's a hate part. Let's talk about the love part. Well, the first love part is that I was on the Today show recently, which I love doing. I just love it. And guess what? The guest host was Amy Poehler, who I revere. Why? Because she's brilliant and funny. By the way, if you've not read her book pretty please, you should. It's really like she's known as a comedian, but this is a beautiful autobiography. It's great. And so I revere her. And when we sat down on set to start, she looked over at me, and you know what she said? She said, I love your podcast. Yes, she said that. She said the words, I love your podcast. Maybe she was lying, and maybe she's never heard my podcast, but maybe she wasn't. Maybe she wasn't lying, and maybe she does love this podcast. Amy Poehler, I loved you before. I love you so much now. And I just love that people are listening to this podcast. But I love the fact that Amy Poehler's listening to this podcast anyway. Isn't that cool? I just think it's super cool. I'm gonna just pretend that I absolutely 100% believe that she loves my podcast and also reserve the right to know that maybe she wasn't. She was just being nice. Okay, listen, I have a second love, and it actually has to do with what this whole podcast is about. And that's decision making, which we've just spent all this time talking about. And I hope you go and try. 10-10-10, by the way, on the plane ride down to a conference in Miami, I decided to try this new strategy, which is to do an autopsy of a bad decision that I made. And actually then when I found out how much I like this strategy, I did three autopsies on bad decisions. And I want to, I want to put this out there as a strategy. I'm developing it. I'm actually thinking, gee, maybe this would be a cool exercise for my students in my decision making class. And I took a bad decision and I wrote down all the things I did wrong, all the things I did wrong, who I didn't listen to, what steps, and now look at. Suffice it to say, in these bad decisions, I never use 10, 10, 10 with them, I use my gut. So there I am being very human. And actually, when I did three autopsies, I found the patterns, Found the patterns and I stared at them. I forced myself to stare at them. So can I suggest this to you? I'm going to develop it more and maybe try it out on my students as well. But I love this idea. I love this little idea that popped into my head that you could do an autopsy on a bad decision and stare right into it so that you think to yourself, I'm never doing that again. And again, the lesson to me was, yeah, you did it without 10, 10, 10. Susie, how many times do you have to learn that you should always use it. And sometimes I don't walk because again, I'm human. But, but again, I love this idea, share it with you. And you know what else? I really love you and I want to thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next week. Becoming youg is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsom of Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Muskan Nagpal and Kristen Muller, with help from Eliza Zinn, Hallie Reiner, Maddy Paul, and Tanya Joji. I'm your host, Susie Welch, and this is becoming you.