At Ask A Manager today, she has an interview with a ‘decision coach’. She invented the term and the job, even though there are other people who do similar things. It was an interesting read because I am he ruler of not making a decision. Ever. I hate making decisions. I dawdle endlessly until I simply cannot drag it out any longer.
It’s funny because someone in the comments said haughtily that why would you pay someone money to help you make decisions when a simple list of pros and cons would do? Yeah! Why would you pay someone money to help you with your emotional problems when you have friends you can talk to? Why would you someone to fix your leaky sink when a good wrench will do the trick?
I’m being very sarcastic, obviously, but you could say the same about so many jobs. Also, as people pointed out, you can make that list and still not be able to make a decision or follow through on your decision. I can relate to that so hard. I can do all the research and ruminate over the pros and cons until the cows come home. That doesn’t mean I’ll actually follow through on the decision I make.
The best and easiest decision I made (to not have kids) was a passive one. I didn’t have to DO anything other than defend myself to others, which wasn’t fun, but it didn’t mean changing my life significantly. Nell participated in the comments and said that most of her clients were people who didn’t typically have difficulty making decisions, but were tripped up over what was currently bothering them.
It’s funny because in the interview, she mentioned that if someone wanted to use a session to figure out whether to break up with someone or not, the answer was usually break up with them. DTMA, as the case may be. It makes sense. By the the time you’re paying someone money to discuss the decision, you’re 90% there to breaking up with them already.
I will say that she charges $197 an hour, which I think is reasonable, but it means she’s targeting a very specific audience. And she’s an American with that point of view as well. She does international calls, but most of her clients are in the States. In the comment section, there were several people concerned about her telling people what to do because it’s such a direct contrast to what a therapist does. She does not market herself as a therapist, but I can see the concern at having an ‘expert’ tell people what to do with their lives.
I am not on board with the ‘it’s ok if you fail because you won’t end up on the street’ mentality when it comes to starting a business, either. She’s right that humans are bad at risk assessment, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t real and valid risks. In addition, it’s a weird American way of thinking to believe that everything will turn out OK in the end. People do end up on the street. People do die from bad decisions. People do mess up their lives, sometimes in awful ways because of bad decisions. She wouldn’t necessarily hear about them or remember them because most people are predisposed to cognitive bias. In other words, we believe what we want to be true is true, and in her case, it’s that any decision is better than not making one (to grossly simplify what she does).
I found it a fascinating interview, though, and she was very engaged with the community. What I was most intrigued by is that she took a passion and made it her business. Same with Aubrey Gordon, who I mentioned the other day as being the co-host of Maintenance Phase.
I hasten to say that it’s not a hobby that they turned into a career because by most accounts, that is not a good thing to do. Well, in the case of Aubrey Gordon, it was partly a hobby–writing, but it was more her passion for combating fat prejudice that drove her forward.
I have mentioned before that I really envy my brother’s ability to make a decision and go forward. He shrugs off the losses as if they were no big thing, and I wish I had more of that in my makeup.
I know I have to switch to video rather than writing because writing is dead. Not completely, but mostly. If you don’t have a podcast/YouTube channel/Twitch channel, you do not exist. I know that. I wish it weren’t true, but it doesn’t matter what I wish. It’s the way of the world right now in that nobody reads. That’s not entirely true as there are blogs that do robust business–such as Ask A Manager. She did a podcast for a while, but it got to be too much for her to keep up with. I know she works with managers in real life–or at least, did at one time. I don’t know if she does it any longer. She is considered an expert on managing, and she has been cited in several articles at several websites.
She is one of the few people I know who makes a living at writing, though. Most other successful bloggers do other things as well. Some of those other things also include writing, but oftentimes, they do things that are not connected to writing at all. Writing has never been that profitable for most people, and it’s at a historic low right now.
I don’t have time to mourn because I need to figure out what I want to do with my life, not what I don’t. I have the enormous privilege of not having to worry about being on the streets or homeless. I can come at this from a position of abundance–not scarcity. I know I need to boil down what I want to do and then just do it. It sounds so simple, but it’s harder than that because of the way my brain works.