Have you noticed how often people argue about a decision when they don’t even agree on what the decision is? Turns out, that’s a terrible way to do decision making.
Start With What You’re Actually Deciding
I picked up The Art of Clear Thinking: A Fighter Pilot’s Guide to Making Tough Decisions by Hasard Lee because I’m not great at decisions. Early on, he walks through his framework, and the first step is simple: Assess.
That sounds basic, but it hit me harder than I expected. Assess means you slow down and figure out what’s really going on before you start firing off solutions. In real life, a lot of us skip straight past that and go right to arguing about options.
You see this in work meetings, family discussions, and any group trying to “decide” something. Everyone brings their favorite answer, but no one has agreed on the question.
The Vacation Fight That Isn’t About Vacation
Take a simple example: a couple trying to decide where to go on vacation.
One person wants a city full of culture, museums, and great food. The other wants a beach where they can just sit, read, and do nothing. On the surface, it looks like a fight about destinations: “City trip vs. beach trip.”
But if you look at it with better decision making techniques, it’s not really about the trip at all. It’s about needs.
- One person is craving stimulation: new experiences, sights, tastes, and ideas.
- The other is craving relaxation: rest, calm, and zero obligations.
If they keep the conversation at the level of “which place wins,” they’re going to keep clashing. Every suggestion feels like a win or a loss instead of a way to meet both needs. Once you define the decision as “How do we get enough stimulation and enough relaxation in the next few months?” a whole new world of options opens up.
Redefining The Problem Changes The Options
If the real decision is about needs, then a few new possibilities show up:
- Maybe one of them can get more stimulation or relaxation at home in daily life, and the vacation can lean toward the other person’s need.
- Maybe they split things up: a shorter city trip and a shorter beach trip.
- Maybe they take one trip together and each plans a solo mini break that matches their personal preference.
The point isn’t that there’s one correct answer. It’s that none of those options even appear until you define the decision properly.
When you start from “What problem are we actually solving?” you stop treating every choice like a binary win or lose situation and start looking for combinations, compromises, or creative designs.
A Simple Decision Making Technique You Can Steal
You don’t need a full fighter pilot framework for this. You can borrow the spirit of that Assess step with one simple habit before you argue about anything:
Ask: “What are we really deciding here?”
- Is it where to go, or how each person gets what they’re missing right now?
- Is it which option is cheaper, or how to balance cost with joy?
- Is it which task to do first, or what outcome matters most today?
If you’re solo, this question keeps you from spinning in circles. If you’re with other people, it can save you from fights where everyone is technically right but arguing about different things.
Decision making techniques don’t have to be complicated to be powerful. Simply defining the decision clearly is often enough to turn “endless frustrating argument” into “okay, now we know what we’re actually trying to do.”
I’m trying to practice that more: slow down, name the real decision, and only then start looking at options. It doesn’t fix every disagreement (even with myself), but it makes a surprising number of them shorter, kinder, and much less pointless.