Decision-making seems to be a common theme in my thoughts lately. Every new thought, after being thought about, turns to the "decision-making" meme in my head and asks, "How do I apply to you, decision-making meme?"
Decision-making meme says back, "You are a metaphor for me. Link us together in the brain, for we will be stronger if we join forces, and you will get a percentage of the attention that I receive from the other thoughts who have joined me in the past."
And I go, "Shut up, you guys, I'm trying to go to sleep."
The latest meme partnership is between decision making, memory, and queue theory. I was think about something, maybe about buying a house or something, and realized that part of the reason that I'm thinking about buying a house is because so many other people are. Perhaps there is a "buy a house" feedback queue in my mind somewhere that is slowly lining up bits of conversations and small reasons in its favor. For a while now, I've been ignoring this queue as a viable option--I don't want to buy a house because I don't want to be tied to Seattle for the next 5 years. The competition between these two memes is based on queue size--I favor not buying a house (and remaining flexible about location) because there are better reasons to refrain from this purchase than there are to go ahead with it. At least, that's what I've thought up until now. I suspect now that the "weight" of a decisions possible choices may be the result of a calculation as simple as (sheer number of reasons) x (number of exposures to each reason). This means that even poor reasons, when exposed to them many times, gain weight in the decision-making process. That's why I think the decision-making process acts according to the rules of queue theory--the same advantages that a business gains by looking at the system in a simplistic manner (using certain assumptions) are also given to the brain when trying to sort a huge number of decisions and choices at once. Queues are filled with all kinds of things, things that are complicated and things that are simple, but in determining the weight (and implied importance) of a queue it's easier to judge this merely by the size. Now, it's possible that a queue with 10 really time consuming items might take longer to go through than a queue with 100 quickly resolved items (and we consider this when choosing between the express and regular checkout lines at the grocery store), but I have to admit that even when it's that explicit sometimes I'll get in the shortest line (even if it's not express).
When I start thinking about actions as switches (essentially the things which the queues are being processed by, which they're waiting for), and reasons as the items that make up queues, it becomes easy to quickly understand a lot about the way I really seem to act sometimes (for better or for worse). That's why this is a good metaphor.
I ignore almost everything that has a queue size below a certain size. For example, for a long time, buying a house wasn't even considered because I didn't have enough reasons and enough exposures to those reasons for it to justify my attention. All of a sudden, the queue gets above a certain size (Leanne's boyfriend went house shopping this weekend), and it gets promoted to "possible thing to consider". I'm not considering it because Sami mentioned it, but his mention of it pushed it over that threshold. Deciding to get married followed a similar pattern... and I don't think that diminishes the complexity of the decision at all, it merely moves that decision into the frontal lobe where it has to be resolved or put back into the waiting line.
Many times I'll be exposed to something, like a friend buying an iPod or a Mac, and I'll know that that's something that I would be interested in, but not necessarily now. I put the exposure in the "buy an iPod" queue and let it sit there until more exposures come in and it's time for me to really consider buying an iPod and buying it now.
Not all of them have to do with buying something. Other decisions, like getting married, that follow a similar pattern include: doing your taxes (between January and April, you let the queue accumulate reasons, and at some point it passes that threshold and gets done), going to the gym (sometimes I have to mentally invoke the queue of reasons to motivate myself enough to go on a certain day when several other things could take precedence), doing an errand, having children, etc.
Immediately I can see that this has a lot of relevance to trends. Everyone has these queues. There's a tipping point when the culture is at a point where almost everyone has enough items in their queue (whatever it might be... say, cell phones) that one extra marketing push can start a chain reaction. They reach 5% of the population, and those 5% send exposures that tip over their friends and acquintences (who were this close to buying one anyway), and on and on until a large percentage of the population suddenly has cell phones. Queues. This is so simple that I know most people already know this, it's just another metaphor for common sense.
Consequences of making decisions like this: the list of decisions aren't prioritized by importance but simply frequency. This means that we need to impose an artificial layer of "importance" to the list in order to make sure that the right things get done first. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to know the hidden importance of items that haven't yet met that threshold queue size in order to get noticed. This leads to an issue that comes up at work often: the cost of delaying an important decision that is hidden. An ex-director of our department at work recently reminded me of the fact that there could be a project worth 1-2% of sitewide sales sitting in the list of projects that we're currently putting off this quarter. Every quarter it sits there it costs the company money, money that it could have made. In some cases a project, sufficiently delayed, can never make up for the cost of the delay. Decisions are the same way... hence the midlife crisis. There are certain actions in our mind whose queues may be small but are actually very important decisions to make. Which reminds me of the Delmore Effect and our fundamental purpose.
Which important decisions are we paying for each day by not deciding on them? This question scares me to death.
So what happens when you have a queue full of exposures to a decision, so many in fact that it's constantly in your attention, trying to be decided upon, and you neglect to make a decision. That's what I felt like emerging from college--and I'm sure everyone has that feeling. "What do I do now?" is the overflowing queue, and it drives you crazy to have that constantly in your mind. Some people choose to ignore it, though. Either because it's been resorted by the prioritization layer, or there is a strong anti-decision-making queue battling it and all other decisions of a certain family out of the way. People who consciously go against the decision-making pressure often can't help but get obsessed by it, because it is such a noisy operation in our mind.
Add one more exposure to the queue of "our decision-making process is wacked."
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