Reaction Paper About the Video on How to

Make Good Decisions

Decisions cannot be done in the future, but it should be done in the present. The video
about “How to Make Good Decisions” was greatly conducted by Mikael Krogerrus and Roman
Tschappeler. In the video, they thoroughly talked about how to make good decisions. I like the
way they preceded the discussion with a short activity in which the audience have to choose a
number from 1 to 10 on making decision in picking a movie they are going to watch. The lowest
rate indicates that they have no problem in picking a movie while the highest rate indicates that
they have difficulties in picking a movie that takes them until morning to choose. When I tried
virtually, as if joining the activity, I rated myself as 7. Mikael, one of the speakers, said that if
you rated yourself 5 and below, you’re not quite as good as decision maker. While 6 and above,
you are a better decision maker, but even in best decisions you’re not very happy because maybe
there is better option. When I come to think of it, yes, he has a point though. Decision making is
very vital to us and to people around us. There are a lot of things to consider in order to come up
to a sound decision making. In the video, the speakers emphasize the leading question “Why is it
that we find it so difficult to choose and take decisions?”. The question is being answered by
presenting the 3 major problems of decision making. These are preparing, timing and regretting.
Of course, preparing is the first problem that we may face in making decisions. The questions
that should be answered in this problem is that; how do you prepare your decisions & what is
your information strategy. How prepare are you in making such decisions in a particular issue.
Basically, you should be mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually prepared so that you
can think of a positive way to make an adequate decision. In accordance to the video, the speaker
explained this problem through illustrating it in a cartesian plane. There are two concepts
presented in this problem, the degree of confusion and the amount of information. The
relationship between confusion and information is presented through inverted bell curve. If you
have very little information about the topic or issue you feel confused. This will result us to get
more information and we want widen our awareness. So, we start to research. The more we
know about the given topic, the more confident we feel the decision about it. This concept was
called by the speaker, TMI (too much information) paradox. However, there is what we call the
tipping point between the two concepts. This is the point when you are questioning your own
knowledge until you get confuse and you unable to make a decision. The speakers quoted that
too much information and little information have just the same impact in making a decision. The
second problem is the timing. The question being raised in this problem is; “When do we know
that we know enough?”. This was illustrated also through a cartesian plane. It was discussed that
the older we get, the more we know. And it is a fact that when we are getting older we became
more mature in making decisions in our lives because basically old people have a lot of
experiences than the young once. The illustration explains that the older we are the more
knowledge we had stuck in our mind. The decision is made at the early stage of our lives. The
decisions that taken early on have way bigger consequences. We can’t make decisions in our
future, because as stated by the speakers in the video, it is invisible. We don’t know the future.
The third problem mentioned was the regretting. Regret is the feeling of sadness, repentant, or
disappointment over something that has happened or been done, especially a loss or missed
opportunity. The leading question here is that how do you live with the decision you made. The
PDF (post decision feeling) was measured with two parameters: how happy you are with your
decision (satisfaction) and how much you expected with the decision (expectation). The two
speakers revisit the activity they performed in the first part of the video. They explained that
those who picked 5 and below, they are called satisficer. They are the one who are satisfied with
the decision they made. They think it wasn’t a perfect decision, but it is good enough. While those who
picked 6 and above, they are called maximizer. They try to maximize the decision and make the absolute
perfect choice. There is a direct relationship between these two parameters. The more you expect
with the decision, the happy are you get if this decision turned out to be good.