The Pros and Cons of Listing Pros and Cons
How listing out pros and cons can actually leave you spinning in Limbo, and what to do to fix it!
“I’m sure we’ll figure out the right thing to do,” my friend said as we discussed whether she should accept a new work opportunity, or stick it out in her current role. “We’ll just make a list of pros and cons.”
“On the one hand, this will be more money, and more opportunity for growth” she continued, “but on the down side, we will have to relocate,” she started listing, “I’m burned out on my current role, and it would be great to leave it in the past, but we just moved into our house that we love, and leaving it would be hard.”
The fatal flaw of listing Pros and Cons
We’ve all heard that listing pros and cons is the best way to evaluate a tough decision. But actually, this practice leaves most people feeling even more confused than before they begin.
In improv we have a game called fortunately/unfortunately in which the action of the players on stage is controlled by the forces of good and evil on the sidelines. By simply alternating a fortunate solution, with an unfortunate event the players are pushed and pulled by these forces for comedic effect until the circumstances become untenable. This is a great way to make comedy. Not a great way to make a decision!
Why?
Our brains are very creative and when we don’t have an answer we tend to invent one. Most of us also have a strong sense of fairness and a need for balance. So when you go back and forth between pros and cons, you’ll often end up with an even list of both and a list that never seems to end. Complicated by your own mental noise, the best decision will not emerge clearly, and when you inevitably ‘go with your gut,’ though you might try and credit the decision to your pros and cons list, it will have been an intuition based choice that could have been made without having gone to the trouble.
The good news is that the instinct to analyze pros and cons can actually be made extremely useful in a time efficient way! It just takes one minor tweak.
Here’s how to fix your pros/cons process
My dad taught me years ago, “Don’t do pros and cons. Do pros THEN cons.”
Separating and completing pros and cons lists individually is a game changer, a time saver, and has been a powerful decision making tool in my personal life, for my friends, and for my one-on-one clients.
Making a Pros, then Cons list (or a Cons, then Pros list) simply means you choose where to start and make an exhaustive list exclusive to one heading before making a list with an opposite heading.
The process breaks down like this:
Choose your starting list. Are you starting with Pros? Are you starting with Cons? Pick one, and only one.
Only work on your first list until it is complete and there is nothing else you can add to it.
On a new piece of paper (or page of your doc) Make your exhaustive contrasting list.
Compare your lists. Gain surprising insights!
Make sure when using this process you observe the following best practices
Only when you’ve finished one list do you move to the next.
Never make your lists side by side on the same piece of paper. Only after listing is fully completed, do you bring them together to compare them.
In my friend’s case she made a pros of staying list, then a pros list for accepting the out-of-state offer. Before she could even get to the cons her decision was clear without having to compare anything. Her pros of staying list had three items, and her pros list for the new opportunity had twenty.
Let me know if you try this technique!
I hope you find this tip useful! If you do try this technique, please let me know what decision you were evaluating, and how this technique helped!
For discussion:
What other decision making processes are you a fan of, and for what kinds of decisions do you utilize them?
Have you ever felt like you made the wrong choice? What did you do about it?