Elevate with Grace

S1, Ep 7: Smart Risks & Boosting your Decision Making Confidence

• Elevate with Grace • Season 1 • Episode 7

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We have all experienced some challenging "stuff" in the past two years, we have probably had a little 'stuffing' knocked out of us, so... 
Are we ready to dust ourselves out? To build our own narrative?  To go in search of a new way of working? To look for opportunities and be ready when they appear? 

In our latest podcast we are diving into further into smart risk taking and unpacking what great decision making looks like, the decision making biases that could be sabotaging you and building your decision making muscle.

ELEVATE CHALLENGE:
Identify a decision you need to make in any aspect of your life that you want to feel a greater level of confidence around what that decision should be. 
Bring that with you to next week’s ep and bounce it off the decision making tools and techniques we’ll be covering to see if one or more of them resonate with you to help you with that decision.

Risk Profile Survey: https://www.elevatewithgrace.com.au/post/risk_profile_survey

SHOW NOTES
HBR Ideas Cast, Interview with Dorie Clark https://hbr.org/podcast/2021/09/how-to-make-strategic-career-decisions-even-in-a-crisis-back-to-work-better
Mike Bayer, The One Decision
Annie Duke, How to Decide
Dominic Price Atlassian, https://domprice.me/what-if-the-great-resignation-is-entitled-bs/
Seth Godin - Sunk Cost Bias
Gary Keller, The One Thing
Emma Isaacs, Winging It
Blog coming soon on power and agency keep an eye on our website or jump onto the mailing list so you receive the latest blogs straight to email: http://www.elevatewithgrace.com.au

We keep referring to linked in learning so felt it only fair that we sought out a free month for you to check this out: https://linkedin-learning.pxf.io/Elevate
If you are keen to check out any of the books we spoke about today:  http://www.booktopia.kh4ffx.net/Elevate

**This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links.

Music created by Claire's daughter Hannah

Claire:

Welcome to the Elevate with Grace podcast. For women who were short on time and long to take steps to create success on their own terms. Our aim is to curate and share the best tips, insights, and knowledge from all of the content out there. Then take the brain strain out of it by giving you the, so what, and some immediate, actionable steps for you to seamlessly slot into your life each week that will help propel you from where you are, to where you want to be. In each episode, we take a look into one of the pillars of our Elevate with Grace success on your own terms" Model, where we explore taking smart risks, cultivating our careers and fueling our financial power. These three elements work together even better when we look at them within the broader context of the big picture aspirations we have for what we want our lives to be like for our future selves, while also paying attention to not letting stuff that might be holding us back, get in our way.

Miranda:

It's episode seven of our Elevate with Grace podcast. I'm Miranda and joining me is the exceptionally talented and insightful Claire. In this episode, we are following up last week's episode, where we discussed why smart risk taking was important to your future. And this week we're talking about taking smart risks and what superpowers you need to take on this feat, which takes us swiftly to decision-making. We are exploring the idea that your decision making approach will ensure that you are confident, do a whole lot less second guessing and have a positive impact on inspiring you to take braver, smarter risks on your journey to living a life of success as you define it on your own terms. To do this in this episode, we are going to be running through quality decision-making, some of the current pressures that might encourage you to build your acumen of quality decision making quickly, decision-making biases, different types of decisions, the limited fountain that is your decision-making muscle. And this week's Elevate Challenge. I've really enjoyed investigating smart risk taking in deeper detail and interrogating what decision-making really is. It's been quite interesting to watch my 2.5 year old leap, climb or jump, heart and soul fully invested, and definitely a little risk taker himself, but it doesn't work for the rest of us. So how do we ensure that we've always got somebody there to catch us? Or trust that the universe is going to make this happen. And we all know that's something that we have to take on ourselves. So with this smart risk taking and the benefits of decision-making acumen, we can make that leap without having that very nervous parent, ready to catch us. For much of my life, I've given little thought to this area and the leaps I've taken in the past. And I wonder whether this is something that you guys also, maybe haven't given a lot of thought to. And if an opportunity was overlooked or not as thoroughly interrogated, as we probably actively haven't been working this muscle, so I'm excited that we start to bring this area to life. Before we leap in let's quickly check in on the Elevate Challenge from last week. Here, we provided an insight into your risk taking profile. This was a 10 question survey for you to take and learn more about yourself and I hope you really enjoyed the insights into what your default risk response is here. With this awareness in hand, it opens you up to either considering taking on more risks, or if you are closer to a five on the risk profile, ensuring the quality of your decision-making process and your risk calculations are high. And we'll talk more about this when we talk about biases shortly. Wherever you are, there is always more muscle to train here and more tools. Claire, how did you go with the challenge and more importantly, how have you been?

Claire:

I'm doing pretty well considering we're living in a city that recently took the title of being the most lockdown city in the world from COVID. I came across a concept recently called active hope, which I found is quite helpful. It's where you're acknowledging and accepting the really tough realities of our current existence. And at the same time, balancing that with focusing on the small things that you can do each day and each week to help you facilitate outcomes that you want for yourself and for your community around you, so that's kept me up beat this week. Learning about myself and how I can actively work on being a better, stronger version of me is one of those active hope activities that I've been doing, and so doing our Elevate with Grace risk-taker survey was a great activity for that. I found that I sit closer to the risk-taker end of the spectrum, which wasn't surprising in itself, that felt right to me around about the three and a half to four spectrum. Filling out the survey was a great way for me to have an opportunity to reflect on the last five years. It helped me recognize that while I have taken some big risks from time to time, it is hugely dependent on what's going on in my whole of life circumstances at that time. And also that my confidence does ebb and flow quite significantly too. If I take a risk and it doesn't work out well for me, I become quite risk averse after that and for a long period of time from then on in where I'm rebuilding my own self-confidence. Taking a leaf out of Emma Isaacs' book,"Winging It", I need to get much better at dusting myself off quicker after a failure. I go into risk averse mode for long periods, and that is really slowing down my progress of getting to the life I'm aspiring to for my future self. What about you? What did you find out about yourself Miranda when you did the exercise?

Miranda:

Oh look in the risk taking exercise. I see just over a four, which on reflection, I think I'm probably more risk adverse in my personal life. Perhaps using that grounding to allow for more chances, maybe a more professional life. Which was interesting because I have worked for the same company for a long time. But there have been loads of opportunities to take risks, stick my neck out and change jobs within. A lot of difficult conversations or challenging conversations. I've been lucky that I've been able to do that I think it'd be really interesting to hear from people that have changed companies frequently, how they score with this, and I wonder if that makes you more of a risk taker or less of a risk taker in your activities within the workplace. So, yeah, just an interesting reflection. Sure it's a personality thing, but after talking about the why of smart, risk-taking, I am so keen to jump into the so what. This has really got me thinking that since we're living in this COVID impacted world, is now a really great time to be talking about smart risks and big decisions, I feel like we've really played it safe in the last two years, as much as possible.

Claire:

Yeah, I know what you mean. I think this is a complex thing to talk about, but I actually think it's a very opportune time to be talking about decision-making and smart risk taking. Almost every single one of us has had our lives turned on its head in some way, shape or form over the last 18 months, and within that, each of us have experienced feelings of loss, sadness, and even anger for elements of our life that existed in the pre COVID world. Loss is deeply personal and unique for all of us. What I might find or feel as a loss, someone else might feel as a bonus or win, in the context of their lives and vice versa. Working from home is a topical example from many. The thing about loss is that it gives us a beautiful opportunity to pause, reflect, and question what truly matters to us. And I think when we start questioning, we start thinking about whether we should be changing anything in our lives and that can get uncomfortable pretty quickly. We often shy away from asking deep questions of ourselves and the world around us, but asking the hard questions and using that information when we're making decisions can help us better steer ourselves towards taking, considered and mindful steps in the direction of a life that we want to create for ourselves in the future. It's actually not that easy to make the right decisions, you've touched on this earlier in the intro Miranda. There's lots of stuff that's at play if we want to make quality decisions, but there's a bunch of helpful concepts and content that we're bringing to the table in today's episode that will help us be more mindful about the quality of our decision-making. What do you think about decisions in lockdown?

Miranda:

I can definitely say that the point there, the confinement of lockdown was definitely unsettling and, it's a roller coaster ride. We've all just been on this crazy rollercoaster. Some days we're up some days with down. There's definitely that loss. And also I guess that freedom, freedom is probably the wrong word, but this idea that you do have that time to reflect and to just do what you're allowed to do in your four walls or within your five k's. as opposed to being on the machine. I think we've come off the treadmill a little bit. I found it time to think about what I want for the future and gain clarity around where I want to be for the next five to 10 years. Definitely a silver lining there. We had the opportunity to know ourselves better and there's power in that. To answer your question, I would say, yes, let's do it and let's make sure that we do so with a really clear intent of decision-making that we focus and use those decision making tools to ensure our leaps are at a time and the most advantageous to our situation.

Claire:

A hundred percent. Being mindful of situational context and what's most advantageous to us in a particular timeframe right now. And what that means in a year from now, or three years from now, or five years from now, is really important, particularly after the year that's been. But anytime really, these decision-making tools and techniques and this whole concept of exploring good decision-making I think it's always relevant. There's always times in our lives where we're wanting to change jobs or move interstate or, a tree change, or looking at our relationships and all that sort of stuff. There was a good episode on the HBR idea cast podcast recently about how to make strategic career decisions, even in a crisis. The podcast hosts, Alison Beard chats with Dorie Clark, who has written a book"The Long Game: how to be a long-term thinker in a short term world". And there was a lot of good advice that Clark shared about how to lift our heads up when the global pandemic has pushed many of us even further into heads-down mode and forced us into a reactive way of living our day-to-day lives. Our agency, like you touched on, I would use the word freedom, our freedom, our agencies has been reduced The amount of control that we have over our lives has been limited in a lot of ways too. And so how do we reclaim some of our own agency and control over our destiny because we can only operate in reactive mode for so long before we find ourselves burning out. There's a strong synergy to some of the stuff that we've been covering in our earlier podcasts about the idea that one way to get back a sense of control and agency is to create a long-term vision for ourselves. Where do we want to be in three years, five years, 10 years from now, and we don't need to get too fixated on how we're going to get there. We can be flexible and agile in that how, as we tackle the weeks and months ahead, depending on how they unfold. It gives us an ability to put some broad views around our personal goals and our why's, it doesn't have to be worked to the nth degree. We can do our shitty first draft and all that stuff that we've spoken about in earlier podcasts. There is some sense of empowerment that comes from setting a broad stake in the ground for our longer term vision and that can help us in getting a feeling of greater agency and give us a context for how to make decisions in tough times like this.

Miranda:

I'll jump in there in there. I found a really cool model about enhanced sense of agency versus diminished agency and what steps were involved there. So I'll chuck that in the show notes cause you're tapping on a very important point there about where we gain control back and how we do that.

Claire:

I'll check out the show notes myself to, to check out that article. I also liked the conversation in the HBR podcast where they talk about cultivating patience and coming from a background of being quite an impatient person, that really resonated with me. Clark used an analogy of looking out for tiny raindrops to help you stay on your course and not give up about how long it takes to get there. Once you've got your long-term goals set, it can take quite a long time and to look for those little tiny raindrops that are giving you indication that you're on the right direction. She also talks about a handstand coach saying that if you ask the average person how long it takes to master a handstand, they would guesstimate two weeks. But in actual fact, it texts about six months of daily practice to be able to master a handstand. And I think that's good for certainly impatient people like me that it can actually take some time to work through this stuff and get you in a position that you want to be for your long-term self.

Miranda:

I really liked that example too. I think we do, just assume that these things can happen. Habits are another one, right. The handstand yeah. Would not have thought it would take six months. Good on those kids, if you think about it, they try every day to do a handstand or cartwheel until they do it. We did it as kids and I never thought about, how long it took? You just you're going to master it.

Claire:

Yep. And the way my core muscles are working after 18 months in mostly hard lockdown, I think it's going to take me a lot, but anyway, that's a good lesson for us all. The other good part about it is that the podcast hosts doesn't shy away from pressing Clark on how really quite difficult it is for many of us to carve out space and time to strategize on what our long-term goals are. Urgent tasks for our job and our families and ourselves each week can be all consuming and it ties into what we're trying to do with the Elevate with Grace podcast, how to get little tiny actions in each week. And you just have to keep resetting and level-setting like, things are gonna go out of control but each week you need to try to find the time and make the time and figure out how to carve out time, to take your head up and look around and think about some more of those long-term decisions and ideas that you have for your future self. I flicked you the podcast Miranda. I know you had a listen. Was there anything else that you liked about it?

Miranda:

I thought it was a great session. Thank you so much for sharing. I think she was quite pragmatic with that time. And she really, like you said, she didn't shy away, but this lady was talking about your nights and weekends, she was going hard and going that 20% time that you time. It's not to be squandered. I think she probably didn't say it, my example, but you know, put away the Netflix and I don't think any of us need to hear that we all need a bit of downtime. But I guess it just makes a good point for us. I relate to building Elevate with Grace with you and the doing this really happens in those hours and weekends, but the energy and the grounding I gain from this is evidence to that Simon Sinek sentiment that when you're doing something you love, working hard isn't hard. And it's actually really energizing. Much like we discussed last week, with smart risk taking on the continuum, you are not cowering in your home or leaping off a ravine, but somewhere in the middle. And she talks about this continuum of decision-making. To explain this thought further, I found that, that piece in the article about your life as a Venn diagram, very relatable. So in your twenties, your work and your interests overlap almost completely as everything's new, you're learning the industry, the company. We were very willing to dedicate all of our hours at work as we built our acumen in that space. And then as you move into your thirties and beyond that Venn diagram has shifted to a point much more like a normal Venn diagram where there's only a small overlap where your work and the rest of your life intersects. Which I can see how that happens, but that can come with its own challenges about finding those areas where your work and your interests overlap. And also if they don't, maybe it is those weekends and those mornings to make your magic happen. Cause it's not coming necessarily from the same place it came from early in life. You mentioned urgent and important, I looked it up and I quite like the Eisenhower Matrix. It gave a label and a framework to those discussions about the urgent tasks versus the important tasks, really how to prioritize, in that ilk of"The One Thing". So don't if you've heard of the Eisenhower matrix before, but that was a good insight or a takeaway.

Claire:

I've used that a couple of times in the, in a work context. I liked your visualization about the Venn diagram spreading out. One of the terms in Vogue at the moment, and they do touch on it a little bit in that podcast is this idea of the great resignation that's happening in the U S and there's been some media lately that it's coming, or it's starting to happen in Australia, too. And I wonder whether as you mentioned, because over time, the connectivity of purpose that we have with our work and then the connectivity around the rest of our whole of life has got a little bit displaced and it's not as close knit as it was once before. In exploring this concept of decision-making it's not a binary decision around resign or not resign. There's a whole range of options that you could look at in between them as how you're looking to make decisions about your career and your life going forward after a heavy period for us all. And if you're forced to make some time in your week to think about these things, it can help you foster a different conversation with your company about how you want it to work in a post COVID world making sure that you're feeling aligned to your purpose and you're feeling energized in your day to day after a lot of us have had a lot of agency come out of our lives, who've been in lockdown and homeschooling and generally difficulties in navigating a post COVID life.

Miranda:

We've certainly been riffing a lot on how that impacts decision-making and it's because we're all making collective change at the same time. So it is such a topical time to be talking about smart risks and big decisions

Claire:

I bought him up previously Dom Price from Atlassian wrote a blog article recently called what is the great resignation is entitled B.S. Dom references some insights from The Guardian where in a four month period between May and August, 90,000 Australian women left or lost their jobs compared to 25,000 Australian men. And he's talking about, is it a resignation problem? Is it a retention problem? What's happening with the people that are moving out of the workforce that really, we want them at the table from a diversity perspective. And in that article, he gives some really great suggestions and some activities on what leaders and employees collectively, as you mentioned, it's a collective situation that we're in and what they can do to have a red hot go at fixing where they are at the moment. Now, both Dom and Dorie Clark say, if you already knew pre COVID that maybe your job wasn't right for you, and you've cemented a few things, or you've already had those conversations by all means, if resigning is the right thing to doing then resigning is the right thing to do, but equally to really explore and give yourself some time to explore what other options you could have And if you can find a tribe of your work colleagues and work with a tribe of managers to really work and help your organization thrive in a post COVID world and in a more virtual working world and enabling some of that flexibility that we've had and people have enjoyed to continue. What can you do in that space and what decisions can you make and how can you map out your decisions and how you're going to handle this over the short to long-term. And take some empowerment actions around that if you can. It's nuanced, right? It's not just this great resignation, there's a lot of stuff that's going on behind that. Have some time and space to, to ask yourself what that means for your future self.

Miranda:

I think employers would actually thank you for speaking up and speaking your truth. And then if it's not just yourself, but it's a collective, they'd much prefer to hear that than lose you. I would imagine most places I'm not not going to say all. You know, you work place better than me and I chuckled out before cause I was imagining this like mutiny. And that's not what it is that all it's actually just being really honest and really true. Interesting that you mentioned tribe because that is coming up a lot in all of decision-making thought leaders consistently, there's this message that, building a bit of a sounding board of colleagues, associates, who are a tribe within your expertise to support big decision-making ideas is one of the most important things that you can do. It was actually mentioned in the HBR podcast, but also in a great book by Mike Bayer One Decision", and quite a few others. He talks about the fact that it's just not possible to make a completely rational and informed decision without this tribe. It's essential to ensure that your decision grounded and less based in emotion. I reflecting on this and going well, yeah, talk to your mum, she's going to be your champion she's in your corner. However, it's one of those instances when she's probably going to build on your emotion as opposed to bring you down. Whereas somebody in your industry or an associate that kind of gets how your world works is going to have maybe a more pragmatic balanced view of the problem, ask the right questions, come up with some Intel, which is going to help make your insights much more useful. Particularly if you're thinking you want to change jobs, it doesn't hurt to talk to other people and they might be like, well, sure. But there might be this other opportunity for you here. Have you spoken about what you really like, what's going to really Set this for you. But likewise, if you need to make some meaningful change and help your workplace move into this new world then that's really important too. I'm always surprised when people share that they're looking for a job and they haven't had any conversations with the organization that this is what we could do. Certainly there's an internal change clock in all of this and sometimes there's nothing within your organization that's going to fill that need. So by all means, but if it's just because the grass is greener, I think we all know that that's not necessarily true. let's have some conversations, in many cases You might be handed a cool project, or you might be seen in a new light because you're willing to step up and have that difficult conversation, and then there's a bit more trust in you and how you portray yourself to the business that you're sharing this pain point, or you're sharing this great idea that's going to help improve your life at work, but also improve the workplace in general. And if you don't the change, well, at least, you know, that you've given it a red hot crack within your organization and you'll have some strong must haves within you when you're looking for that new role. Either way, you're going to do a lot more to put yourself on equal a better footing. Off the back of last week's survey I do think it's super important that you know yourself as much as possible. The research we did really talks about how people make decisions differently. There's also the piece around your own innate personality type. So if you're an introvert, you are going to do a internal review, put up a lot of protections, you're not going to be as comfortable to go and talk to other people. And knowing that about yourself. We'll provide some extra tools next week, to support that. But at some point, this is consistently shared across thought-leaders that talking to other people is a big, big help. As an extrovert, you're probably going to be doing gut based decision-making. You're going to leap and fill in the blank as you go, I think there's an analogy somewhere where you jump off a cliff and you build a parachute on the way down. Several years ago, my business coach suggested that I take a W A M, WAM survey to understand my natural strengths and a couple of key takeaways that I still try to offset in my day to day decision making or risk setting are around my natural instincts to make decisions. I am very, gut-based very extroverted and a lot more likely to jump without going into all of the facts or the systems around me. Interesting reading in my eyes, X book Winging It, which you've spoken about a little bit because she encourages that. And there's some really good in that, but there's also, sort downfalls. There's these things called cognitive biases and the idea here is that these cognitive biases set you up to feel like you're making a really informed decision when maybe you're just taking your gut instinct and leaping. Like confirmation bias, which is where you seek out information, that's going to confirm that, yes, I'm right. This is the right decision to make, and you ignore all else. There's a little bit of that going on out there in the world at the moment, but we'll leave that alone. Then there is anchoring bias, which is over-reliance on a single piece of information or experience, or you've heard something you anchor to it and you can't be swayed. The halo effect bias, so it's your gut feeling that you really like the person or brand and any information or experience it's really hard to taint that with that halo effect And overconfidence bias, which is overestimate your own abilities to make decisions without seeking any data. This WAM survey also shared that there is other decision-making preferences out there. And it's actually been a huge help in my work, as I seek to understand the people that I work with for, and that they're not all like me. Right. So we have to allow for different people in different decision making styles. There is a data based decision making style. There is evidence-based decision-making styles. There is time-based where they just need to sit on it and take time and it doesn't matter what you do or what your gender is, they just need whatever their time clock is to make that decision. And then there's ones that draw on past experience, whether that's a good thing or a bad thing to make that new decision. I always encourage people to find out as much as they can about themselves and then they can course correct from there.

Claire:

We've spoken about a couple of strength based surveys in episodes previously. I'm a fan of them, both for knowing yourself. But as you said, Miranda, also knowing other people and how they may make decisions, and the types of personalities that they have, especially in this world where we're now probably getting new colleagues coming on board and we're meeting them in a virtual context and so having that knowledge and doing that work to understand each other can really help in an environment. Talking about biases they're so important in terms of how they influence our decision-making. Seth Goden, I noticed recently released a short LinkedIn learning course on decision-making where his view is that there's one crucial thing that impacts our ability to make great decisions. And he terms it as being where we find it really difficult to stop hoarding our chips and our alternative term for this is a sunk cost bias. Basically the concept is that even when there's a bunch of warning signs that we should pay attention to with respect to a particular personal or professional endeavor in our lives. We unconsciously, or probably sometimes even consciously find a reason, a bit like you're anchoring bias Miranda it's a similar type of concept, we find a reason to ignore those warning signs because we think to ourselves, I've invested years and years of my time and energy blood, sweat, and tears into this relationship or this company or this work specialization and I just keep pushing myself to persist with it for a bit longer. Seth urges people to really reflect on whether our decisions are delivering the change that we're seeking to make right now. Are the decisions that we're making, getting the results that matter to us. And are our decisions holding us back and fundamentally is our attachment to the chips and hoarding the chips, i.e. our sunk cost bias, holding us back from making the right decisions for our future selves. I think we can hugely underestimate how much we don't want to admit to ourselves that we've made a bad decision in the past. He gives a good analogy about buying a boat, there are so many boats sitting unused in boatsheds and the owners continue to pay to store the boats in the boat sheds, even though they don't use them anymore. How many unused boats are we currently holding on to in our lives? And we just keep paying the boat shed fees, because it's much easier than admitting to ourselves that we've made a bad decision in buying the boat in the first place. We need to face into that decision and just let it go. It talks about things that we've made decisions about and have been part of our lives for so long, but we treat them as an asset that's gifted from ourselves. So if it's time to let go of the boat, then we need to face into that decision and let go of the boat or that career or that relationship or whatever. It's really tough thing to do for most of us.

Miranda:

Oh, gosh, absolutely. And if any of my family happens to listen to this, I had nothing to do with the boat example. my dad has two boats and he would absolutely relate, Anyway, I think he hopes that he's going to have time, at some point to actually use them. Other biases that we haven't quite covered, they were highlighted in Annie Duke's work, which I was really thrilled to see an interview with her at the end of Seth Godin's. I'm a big fan of both of her books,"How to Decide" and"Thinking in Bets". And I think she's got another one as well. Others of that relating or outcome bias. This is where we judge the quality of our decisions based on the outcome. She gives the example of you choose to take a job and the job doesn't work out and so therefore it was a bad decision and she speaks to this as it's not a bad decision. You obviously you've got to do your decision making process at the front to make sure that you don't fall into the trap of that relating or outcome bias. Relating bias is looking back and reflecting and saying that was the wrong decision to make, and then not making that same sort of decision in the future. And Claire, you mentioned I think about how, when you pull back from decisions if things don't go your way but then future decisions are a challenge for you. This is where maybe something like a decision tree would be really helpful in making that initial decision. So whatever the outcome might be, you've anticipated it, and more on this next week. Similar, but not the same is hindsight bias where we over exaggerate or we misremember facts after the outcome. I'll say to link one experience to the others, hindsight's fairly frustrating. So hindsight bias is fairly self-explanatory. As you mentioned, just so important to understand that these biases are in play in everyday lives and if we're aware of them and we can catch ourselves going, oh no, that's confirmation bias or hang on. I'm thinking of it as sunk cost bias here. Sunk cost bias comes up so much in negotiation, really understanding what your sunk costs and you want to go out and not counting that sunk cost in your decision-making process at all. Such a hard discipline to have, and we're going to summarize these and put them in the show notes. We'll definitely put them on a blog on the website because I think it's so important to keep reflecting back on those and training that muscle to go hang on, is this a real decision that I'm making or relating.

Claire:

I could talk about unconscious bias and decision-making forever. It really is a very behavioral kind of concept for us human beings. Like we're so impacted by our lives to date and we could just go on, about this forever. But the interest in making this podcast not go for a thousand hours, one of the last things that I wanted to talk about too, in terms of quality decision-making and what can impact our quality decision-making. There's a book called"Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman. It always comes up as highly rated on the topic of decision-making. It's been in my Goodreads book list for a long time, but I haven't read it yet so in prepping for this podcast episode, I listened to the summary of"Thinking Fast and Slow" on the"What You Will Learn" podcast, which is quite a good podcast. It's a bit like Blinkist. The two co-hosts read a business book and then summarize it on the podcast."Thinking Fast and Slow" talks about we have two systems of thinking. We have system one, which is fast thinking where we make quick, almost instantaneous judgements and assumptions. And there's system two thinking, which requires us to invest in much more cognitive efforts in decision-making. So for example, doing our tax returns, parking in a tight space versus system one thinking which is what I'm going to have for lunch and what do I think about that person? The biggest takeaway that I had from this concept is that we have a limited amount of system two energy on any given day. It's like having a tank of fuel in your car and it can be drawn down pretty easily. So it sits in the background. It doesn't really work if it doesn't have to, we ordinarily go to our system one quick based decisions. What I think is really important, and if I think about women in general, that we often have got a large mental load that we're carrying every day. So by the time it gets to the end of the day, we've used so much of our cognitive load on different things that makes it tricky to leave any space in the tank to make strategic decisions, and really think about what we're doing with are we addressing those unconscious biases? Are we thinking about different ways to make decisions? Not binary, I've got to quit or not. But by the time we get around to it, maybe we don't feel like we've got that energy in the tank. We'll talk more about this in next week's episode, around tools and techniques, but one of the things we need to think about is when are we carving out time for ourselves and space in our days? Because really, if we can earlier in the day to use some of those cognitive muscles to make harder decisions is something that we should be conscious of as well.

Miranda:

Well, I didn't completely love this book. It was a couple of years ago when I read it. And when you mentioned that it was like, oh yeah, I remember that. And it was frustrating, I think to read the book because maybe don't necessarily want to hear it all. but I do think that the major takeaway was the need to do that. heavy cognitive lifting. As you mentioned before, your brain was too tired. I found probably a two hour benefit in my day in terms of how I use my day by stopping, trying to push myself late at night when I was falling asleep and still trying to work and try to push through those barriers Also snacking you're doing a little snacking and coffee at night as opposed to getting up that hour or two hours early in the morning. And even though it takes a little bit to love a 5:00 AM. But it's so much easier and quicker just to pump out some work. I was finding that yeah, three hours at night is equal to about half an hour or one hour first thing in the morning. So while I didn't love the book, I really appreciated the concepts and the benefits from the book. And you're rating the whole thing. I think you'd find it frustrating.

Claire:

Then with using my time effectively. I just absolutely just listen to the cheat sheet version on the podcast.

Miranda:

You know, I'd tell you, I thought you'd love something, I think that's definitely what we want to do is curate those nice tight bites. This is what we want you to take away from this. And, um, Don't get frustrated with all the other stuff that we were being told we can't do.

Claire:

Well today, we've talked quite widely and broadly about stuff that might be impacting the quality of our decision-making. hopefully for our gracious listeners, we've ignited a curiosity for being more mindful about how we go about making decisions. A few things we've spoken about is having a stake in the ground about your long-term goals and future vision for yourself can help because it can be there as your navigating the twists and turns of life. And you can think about how that's impacting those longer term aspirations you have for yourself. A conversation that we could've gone on for hours around our unconscious and conscious biases and our risk-taking personality and archetypes and how having an awareness of those can really impact on the quality of our decision-making. And finally, knowing that there's different types of decisions and being aware of the time of when we're making decisions and when we're using our cognitive energy. And, thinking about how we prioritize our day and our workloads and our life around that. So we can really make the most of our cognitive abilities. I think all of that is, is helpful. There's a quote I liked from Tony Robbins, which is the quality of your life is not your conditions. It's your decisions at any moment in time, you can change your whole life by making new decisions. Making decisions is far from a one size fits all concept. We make tons and tons of decisions all the time, every day. And it would just be great. If one takeaway that you're getting, is it just to have that thought bubble in your mind? As to some things that will change the way that you could make better quality decisions and help you take smarter risks is really the context of what we want to talk about. In next week's podcast, we're going to be exploring some different tools, techniques, and methods that you can experiment with when you're trying to make some decisions. And so our weekly action challenge is to identify a decision that you need to make in any aspect of your life, that you want to feel a greater level of confidence around when you're deciding what your decision should be. If you can bring that with you to next week's episode, it will help you bounce it off the decision-making tools and techniques we'll be covering to see if one or more of them resonate with you for helping you make that decision.

Miranda:

Very excited to bring you those all important tools next week to build your decision-making muscles. As always, we have put all of the curated content we've mentioned today in the podcast episode notes. So check them out over the next week and dip into some of the stuff that resonates with you and will inspire you to take those small, actionable steps for your own success journey. Please also check out our website, elevatewithgrace.com.au, I think particularly this week going to be a whole lot of content in there that's nice and juicy and hop onto our Instagram for more curated content and those daily updates. We would love, love, love to hear from you how you're going so please drop us an email at elevatewithgrace@gmail.com. And if you're interested in any of the book titles that we've discussed, we do have a Booktopia link in our show notes and website, we would be so grateful if you use that. And of course, please like share and subscribe this podcast it's such an important way to ensure other women find this podcast and that we are collectively lifting each other up. We can't wait to chat to you again next week. Thank you so much, Claire. And thank you everyone for listening. Thanks Miranda. Thanks everyone.