Today I want to propose using a coin as a way to make decisions. Now, of course, I don’t mean that it’s a good idea all the time, but here is a situation where I think it’s useful. Imagine that you’re choosing between two things. Personally, right now, I’m trying to decide between two speakers. But imagine you’re trying to decide two cars, two jobs, two headphones, whatever it is. And you’ve facing your decision for a while but can’t decide. The fact that you can’t decide between them means that at some point they are both kind of equivalent. If one of them was amazing and one of them was terrible, you would decide very quickly. The more time passes, the more it means that the options could be very different, but how can you tell which one is better? Maybe there’s one car that is electrical and modern and one card that is cheap and old. They’re not the same, but they’re similar in their attractiveness. If one of them was amazing, one of them was terrible, you would decide very quickly. But the fact that you can’t make up your mind and the choices feel kind of the same, means that while they can be very different on the surface, they are not very different in terms of their value to you at this point in time. So it’s hard to make a decision.
Now, if you try to make a decision, it could take a really long time. Time has a cost as well. Imagine that you’re deciding between two digital cameras and you’re going to take another six months to decide, you’ll have six months without a digital camera, you’re deciding for six months about two cars. One of them might not stay on the market, and so on.
The first thing to realize is that after we spend time thinking for a while, at some point we have a diminishing return. Both options are great, the differences between them is so small that we can’t figure out which one is better. And maybe the opportunity cost of delaying it by more time has more cost than benefit.
Here is where I recommend a coin. Why? Because a coin flip ends the dilemma now, you won’t spend another week or a month or six months on the decision. The second thing I really love about the coin, is that there’s a couple seconds of uncertainty, right? If you put a random number generator in Excel or something, that’s immediate. I actually like the act of tossing the coin in the air. Why? Because in my experience, when you toss the coin in the air, the moment it’s in the air, you know how you want it to land.
So here is my recommendation. Consider your options. But when you get stuck and you have two good options, please realize that it means that both options are likely to be very good and very hard to distinguish. Take opportunity cost into account and make a promise to yourself that if you can’t decide within 24 hours, you’ll toss a coin. And then, if you haven’t made your decision within the 24 hours, flip the coin. But the moment you flip it, ask yourself what you would like it to land on. And make that choice.
So, to better decision-making for all of us, including those with the coin method.
