A Sane way of making a Judgment

In our daily life, we come across many ideas, make many decisions. Decision making is a tough job and can sometimes feel like science. Judging a situation is productively applying our intuition. Every human makes thousands of choices on a given day(even more). How to make a judgment that offers maximum returns? Is there any process that can explain the art of analysis. Judgment is a complex skill to master, but one can simplify it by knowing what the factors that affect our judgment are.

I am not a personality coach, neither a subject matter expert nor a Judge in a court. Being a human, I make many right decisions as well as bad decisions. But, I learn from them. In that process, I have observed that judgment is pretty simple if we think like a child. A child’s mind is free from social clutter and applies a more straightforward approach to analysis or decision making.

As a Software Engineer, I take many decisions while writing code, implementing a new feature, discussing a design decision. I think the whole point of judging something is asking ourselves a few basic questions.

In the first-half, let me present you with a simple process for making an excellent judgment by leveraging basic questions and thoughts. You can apply these simple rules to small judgments to large ones. In the second, we see factors affecting the quality of our decisions.

Thought Process

An idea comes to our mind…

What can it be? It can be one of these two actions:

1. Solve/fix a problem
2. Make a completely new attempt

Our life is very tangled that we have so many questions to solve at both work and home. Those can emerge from existing things or maybe from our new attempts like move to a new place, shop a new item, try different things.

When we take up something, a problem or a fresh attempt, ask these questions:

Kata I

— — —-

• Why are we doing it? ***
• What are we doing? **
• How are we doing it? *

Mark the order of questions! It is essential. Those are simple queries usually asked by children. But, those are tough questions when you ask yourself before judging something. If you are doing something silly or completely novice, these questions will give you an instant answer and saves you from falling in the wrong bowl.

If you don’t have an answer to the first question “Why?”, then STOP judging. All preceding actions without “Why” may destine to fail in uncertainty or can cause damage beyond your control. Now, take another possibility.

Let us say that you have satisfying answers to the above questions. What next? After you decide the way of “How you can do it?”, ask further questions:

Kata II

— — —-

• Is it the only way?***
• Is it reversible?***
• Is it an efficient way?**
• What are the implications?**
• Are the consequences aligned with our priorities?*

If one cannot find multiple ways, it means they are not thinking out of the box. If one doesn’t measure down the consequences, it is right away a hasty judgment and should be avoided.

The irreversible actions should always be judged with extra care and thought.

Let us say you have found an excellent way to execute your action, and listed down all the consequences, and these factors should take the front seat in them:

Kata III

— — —-

• Immediate benefit/loss
• Long term benefit/loss

You now know what to expect from your judgments in return. The magnitude of implications may be ignore-able or exciting to a person depending on their priorities. So align the consequences with priorities.

With all the brainstorming until now, you took a judgment! Woah!

A few seconds pause…

What next? You have already performed an action based on your judgment. Can you do anything? Yes! All you can do is to be satisfied with your move.

If that judgment incurs a benefit, then try to preserve the success formulae. If it brings a loss, then carefully assess the quality of considerations you have used to make the judgment.

They are few things which you should keep in mind while judging something:

• Know how to separate controllable/uncontrollable things in life
• Accept that everything has a good and bad associated with it
• Time can strongly affect a judgment

Is it that simple to put “How to make a good judgment?” in half of an article? NO! As I mentioned in the opening lines, making a judgment is always tough.

Few factors make it much harder. Ex: The Time alone increases judgment complexity thousandfold. Let us see how.

Role of the Time in Judgement

According to Roman Stoics, Time is a powerful concept that is powerful only next to God. For Ex: The earth happily supports a seed to grow into a plant and then into a huge tree. It is happy to see its child standing tall and healthy. That tree bears flowers and fruits, which makes both trees and earth happy. But over time, the fruit or flower drops to dust and withers away. Everyone knows that Time is the killer and the earth and the tree never questions the authority. Because Time is the one who gave the tree and fruits to earth, and it is time to take them back.

In my opinion, Time is the most respected entity in the universe. Most of the relations in Physics are incomplete without time. The Static energy is not so deadly until it becomes Kinetic. Once it is, time makes it more lethal.

Factor in the Time while Judging

How can one ignore such an important entity while making a Judgement? One shouldn’t. There are a few factors which are indirectly affected by time while judging:

1. Opportunities
2. Disposable Knowledge

Opportunities always go into a black hole. You cannot retrieve them back.

Judging an Opportunity

It is wisely said that “A lost opportunity is gone forever.” An opportunity like an interview or a leadership showcase is a chance that allows one to judge and act for something productive in a short period.

One should not delay deciding on an opportunity. But, all opportunities may not be worthy to act upon them. It is very tricky when you play a time-bound game of judging an opportunity.

The thumb rule is to follow two steps:

1. First, evaluate the opportunity quickly
2. Then, assess the factors that wins the opportunity

If you procrastinate or delay the first step, time pulls back the opportunity. If you do not judge the second step, you might not make use of the opportunity. So judge both of them equally.

Judging with Disposable Knowledge

What is this “Disposable Knowledge”? Did you hear about Disposable Money? According to any English dictionary, the word disposable means “Something you use and throw.” Similarly, the disposable money you spend on the bills is used as an exchange medium and thrown away. No one returns your money bills the next day.

The knowledge can be disposable if it can be outdated in the future. Like floppy disks or geographical boundaries, specific knowledge is used at some point of time in history but can be just vintage later. Time is the one who is causing this phenomenon again.

When you make a judgment, always factor in the type of knowledge you are using to make a decision. If it is disposable, then it can cause ripples as time progresses and may not look like a sound judgment in a different generation. Or, it may not give results as you expected in the long-run.

Sometimes you have to unlearn what you have learned before. In that way, you can improve your judgments with more quality inputs.

Other factors

Attention

The other factor that can impact a judging process is focus or attention at the time of the judging process. A decision taken hastily between many distractions can be of lesser quality than the one made with complete focus. So, when there is a choice for you, try to make decisions from a calm environment. Put all your attention on it.

Do one thing at a time when you solve a problem.

Clear mind

A clear mind can make an exceptional decision than a brain with fears and biases. So, try to tackle important decisions when you have some calmer hours of the day or months free from major commitments.

Taking Responsibility for our Judgements

By using the Katas mentioned above, one can avoid common judgment errors by filtering ideas through basic self-questions.

But, even after taking a thoughtful, wise judgment and the following action, the journey doesn’t end there. One has to take full responsibility and accountability for one’s actions. It is to make oneself believe that unexpected things can happen in our life. This world is so complex, and taking action always has a direct/indirect side-effects. If something goes wrong, you now have some work to retrospect the whole judging process and its inputs, which is learning.

Usually, the number of ways of making a bad judgement outweighs the ways of a sane judgement. What is the reason? As we grow up, our sub-conscious brain takes the control over basics and we make the blunders believing it helps. Let us turn-off that auto pilot for good. This article is one such attempt to make you remember it and hope you enjoyed!

Either you are a Software Engineer or a businesswoman, asking these questions and meditating can help your decision making.

Overall, a sane is a sound and pure mind like a child! Isn’t it?

Resources:

• Thanks, unDraw for the illustrations.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism
• http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html