Happy & Healthy
THAT'S WHY A PRO-CON LIST IS A GOOD IDEA
For big decisions, but really BIG decisions, my Gilmore friend Rory always made a pro-con list (a for-against list indeed, but that sounds a bit less sexy, right?). She pondered over her pro-con about Ivy League universities. And so Yale came out much more favorably than her lifelong crush Harvard. My life choices don't take place in the Ivy League regions, but I happen to be the queen of lists. So I had to try a pro-con list too. These are my wise lessons. 1. Choosing something?.
Multiply your list. I made a real list to choose between two things. And that's lesson one in the pro-con story, that doesn't work. You take one subject and write down all the pros and cons you can think of about it. I want that house because my favorite brow bar is around the corner. I don't want that house because the shutters are fuchsia. And if you don't do this and write two subjects mixed together, then by point twenty you have to figure out whether point three was a pro for one or a con for the other. Do you follow me? Exactly my point. You panic, have to do it again, and you don't want that. Are you choosing between buying or renting a house? Then make a pro-con rental list AND a pro-con purchase list, otherwise you'll confuse that decision around point four.
2. Only for Important matters (with a capital I).
If a subject is worth a pro-con list, then it's a Thing. I strongly advise against making such a list if your subject of interest is whether or not to eat spaghetti bolognese. You can decide impulsively about that as much as you can (in the case of the vegetarian person, not of course). But if you're going to swing a decision with your ticker? Then start writing, because then you're dealing with a heavyweight among the pro-cons.
3. Make it pretty.
You're going to make a breathtakingly important choice, you don't do that on a scrap of paper. You get some nice paper, with a gilded washi tape as the line between your pro and con. And all those points worth writing down go on paper with the most beautiful ink from a fountain pen. A beer coaster is really nice, but not so pretty in thirty years. And then you can show your descendants a framed copy of the life decisions you made when you were nearing thirty. In the absence of heirs, your neighbor will surely find it lovely to admire the paper. Mine is in a.
soft leather Moleskine ; a great place for serious matters.;4. And then the numbers.
Do you have all those pros and cons written down with military precision? Then it's time for some numerical seriousness. Numbers make things more serious. People who work with numbers also have a kind of numerical grandeur around them. But back to your list. When it comes to buying a dream house, that supermarket around the corner is quite secondary to the price (see what numbers do?). You therefore give all those arguments a value. For the pros, a 1 means 'really not that important, but it accidentally ended up on my list'. If you give that point a 10, then it's really a fantastic point. And for the cons, you do it the other way around, so really-not-so-bad gets a 1 and a good point against gets a 10. Add it all up and voilà: there's the scoring. Is it a victory for the pros or do the cons take the win?.
After cutting and pasting my pro-con list, I felt about ten kilos lighter (
too bad it remained just a feeling). My brain cells were neatly arranged in order of importance. It doesn't mean that choosing becomes a piece of cake, but it does look quite professional. And if you've filled out the pro-con list with lie detector-like honesty, then that handsome piece of paper shows exactly what that little voice in your head has been trying to make clear all this time.For big decisions, but really very BIG decisions, my Gilmore friend Rory always made a pro-con list (a for-against list indeed...
