We make decisions, even important decisions, all the time. All of us make the best decision possible given the information we have available.
But where do we go from there?
The satisfaction you experience from your decisions is based not just on the outcome of those decisions but also on the amount of time you consider counterfactual scenarios. What would have happened if I hadn’t taken this job, if I had asked for a raise sooner, if I had pursued a different degree in school?
Because these questions invite you to think about an abstract world in which nothing is certain and every answer can be determined by your imagination, thinking this way can lead to an infinite series of what-ifs and could-have-beens. Just the act of spending time on counterfactuals can undermine the value of the decision you made in the first place.
What-if questions intrigue us—it can be endlessly fascinating to imagine what might be different—but what-ifs do not serve us or help us reach the best possible outcome for the decisions we have already made.
Miguel Arteta’s first taste of the movie-making business was unpleasant and intimidating.
“Because people would do anything to get their first movie made, there was this constant, spirit-crunching pressure. Every decision you made was made to please the potential backers, and then when they decided not to give you money for the project, you went back and thought about everything you changed to please them in the first place.”
Then he came to the conclusion that the money chase was like a dog chasing his tail. “Everything was temporary until you got turned down, and then you started all over again.”
Miguel decided that if he was really going to make his movie, it ought to be his movie. No more constant changes to attract backers. “We would take money only from people we respected, people whose opinions we felt good about.”
Miguel wound up finding support for what became the critically acclaimed Star Maps and later said his movie came to life only when he “stopped second-guessing myself.”
People who spend more time thinking about their possible selves, the lives they might be leading if they had made different decisions, are 46 percent less satisfied with their career decisions than people who do not spend much time imagining what might be different.
McGregor 1999