on my mind: decision-making and stress

I know it’s awful to come back from a fantastic European vacation and have the next blog post be about decision-making and stress.  But these subjects reared their ugly heads because there are moments on a vacation in a foreign country that are stressful — not knowing a language, getting turned around, figuring out currency with 1000s of something, missing something obvious, getting around public transportation.  While adventurous and different initially, over two weeks, these inevitably lead to frustration and friction (even between loving spouses).  And on vacation and in life you want to minimize these moments and maximize fun.

Which brings me to one of my current mantras for handling decision-making and choosing my battles (both in life and on vacation):

I read an article while in a doctor’s waiting room (probably while doing my PC medical stuff) about this 10-10-10 thing and it has stuck with me.  The idea (from Suzy Welch), as I remember it,  is to look at impending choices from the three perspectives: How will this decision affect me, my family, my relationships, my career in the next 10 minutes or the next 10 months or the next 10 years?  The article I read focused a lot on working mothers making decisions to balance work and family, but I’ve found it helpful in navigating my small-town Peace Corps life.

To some extent I’ve personalized Ms. Welch’s 10-10-10 to make it mine.  I dont’ know if how I use it “fits” with her philosophy as I haven’t read her book and the article is kinda fuzzy in my memory.  But when I’ve got a library card in hand and am in the US of A, it will be on my to-read list.  In the meantime, here are some examples of my adaptation.

A bunica cuts me off in line.  I have a choice — I can get angry about it, all the while dwelling on this cultural phenomenon or I can let it go and put my energy elsewhere.  Does that bunica cutting me off matter in the next 10 minutes, 10 months, or 10 years? Does it really affect me on any of those measures? Well, it’s an inconvenience, but no.  So I can let it go.

Our centrala (hot water heater) is working but leaking water and the landlord isn’t being hugely responsive to our inquiries about it.  In the next 10minutes, it doesn’t really affect us — we’ve got a bucket under it and it’s dripping, we’re taking cold showers cause it’s crazy hot.  But in the next 10 months, we’re going to need the centrala operating to get us through the winter.  In 10 years, it’ll be a great story to tell our kids.  So while we don’t need to work ourselves up right now about this, we’ll need to address it soon.

And as a final example, while on our vacation, we had difficulty getting into the swing of spending money.  After a year of living simply on a shoe-string, going to Vienna and Prague felt like a huge splurge.  We only ate one meal out a day but we often felt guilty spending the money (12€ per person per meal feels like a TON).  But we thought to ourselves, in 10 years, we’ll remember the great burgers we had in Prague and all the gelato we ate in Vienna and our pocketbooks won’t remember it, because in the big scheme of things a nice meal here or there isn’t going to break our bank.

It’s a great exercise and quite practical — it stops me from making mountains out of mole-hills and helps me put my energy (positive or negative) into tasks that are meaningful, simultaneously helping me prioritize what needs my immediate attention.  Yay for perspective!

(image from http://www.suzywelch101010.com/)