Everyday each one of us makes many, many decisions such as what to eat, going to the bathroom, getting a drink, etc. Recently I’ve been thinking about how I make decisions and I’m quite confident I make them in a different way. In fact most of my thinking assumes that the typical person decides in some different way. Frequently I make decisions based on what I think others would think…I have a hard time explaining this so I think it will be best to just give an example from today.
Tonight I had to do laundry and decided to do just one load since that would be sufficient to get me through the week. When I went to take my load and put it into the dryer I was faced with making a decision: Which dryer do I want to use? To help explain the rational I need to give you the laundry room layout. Starting from the entrance there are three washers, a large sink, and then three dryers all in a row. So when I have to make this very simple decision I start by deciding that I want to use the dryer with the least amount of use because that is probably the one that will be most efficient drying my clothes. So the question immediately becomes which dryer would have the least amount of use...now I have to make a guess at what the “typical” person would be thinking in my situation. I believe most people would be thinking I want the closest dryer so that I don’t have to walk far from the washer. That means that the first dryer is out of the question. That narrows it down to the two far ones. I could (and typically in this case) assume the same logic rules out the middle dryer since it would be the next easiest, but I typically won’t jump to that conclusion. I then tend to weigh various possibilities to select from the remaining two. Here are some of the questions that I asked myself before throwing it in the middle one:
1) What are the odds that other people in my situation think about this?
2) Is this like using urinals where if someone else is using one you leave a “buffer” urinal (if possible) between each other (if it is then the far one would be the one that should be used whenever dryer 1 is in use)?
3) Why am I still thinking about this when the outcome is going to be marginal at best?
Tonight I had to do laundry and decided to do just one load since that would be sufficient to get me through the week. When I went to take my load and put it into the dryer I was faced with making a decision: Which dryer do I want to use? To help explain the rational I need to give you the laundry room layout. Starting from the entrance there are three washers, a large sink, and then three dryers all in a row. So when I have to make this very simple decision I start by deciding that I want to use the dryer with the least amount of use because that is probably the one that will be most efficient drying my clothes. So the question immediately becomes which dryer would have the least amount of use...now I have to make a guess at what the “typical” person would be thinking in my situation. I believe most people would be thinking I want the closest dryer so that I don’t have to walk far from the washer. That means that the first dryer is out of the question. That narrows it down to the two far ones. I could (and typically in this case) assume the same logic rules out the middle dryer since it would be the next easiest, but I typically won’t jump to that conclusion. I then tend to weigh various possibilities to select from the remaining two. Here are some of the questions that I asked myself before throwing it in the middle one:
1) What are the odds that other people in my situation think about this?
2) Is this like using urinals where if someone else is using one you leave a “buffer” urinal (if possible) between each other (if it is then the far one would be the one that should be used whenever dryer 1 is in use)?
3) Why am I still thinking about this when the outcome is going to be marginal at best?