Over the last several years, I have noticed that my kids frequently ask me simple questions or preference, for which I really don’t have an opinion. A good example of this is when we are playing a board game. Dad, which color do you want? I used to reply something like “I don’t care”. But then I discovered that when I take that strategy, it seems to take a very long time to actually agree on who should be which color. It seems to start an entire negotiation. On the other hand, if I quickly just pick a color, say green, and my kid is okay with that, then we quickly get to start our game. Or, if turns out that my son or daughter wanted to be green, then they say so, and I choose a different color. I don’t fully understand why this seems to work better than me saying “I don’t care”, but it really seems to help.
I have found this also applies to situations like choosing clothes or hairstyles. My daughter might ask me which shirt I think she should wear – the blue or the green, and it really doesn’t matter to me. I just quickly choose one. Sometimes she agrees; other times she already has her own preference. I honestly don’t really know why she asked me if she is going to pick for herself anyways. But it really seems to help the situation if I pick something. I suppose that perhaps by me making a choice, I demonstrate that I am paying attention to the question, and that I find it valuable enough to give an answer. If there is disagreement with an answer, I can defer to the other person’s preference, and show that I am willing to compromise.
These sorts of situations also remind me a bit of yootles. This was an idea from my good friend Daniel Reeves – a way to help decision making, by attaching money to your preferences. In order to make it more equitable, he created a pseudo-currency, and a simple ledger system. Thus, when choosing which color piece to play in a board game, instead of just saying “green”, I might say “green – 2 yootles”. If my opponent says “red 3 yootles”, then we would go with their choice, but they would have to pay me 3 yootles. If I accumulate a bunch of tootles, then I can use them later, when I actually do care strongly about some decision. My wife Clare and I tried this for awhile, but it didn’t work for us really. We would often end up both bidding 1 yootle, ending in a tie, which was then broken by the flip of a coin. Clare really hated the idea of simply letting fate decide our decision, so in the end we both ended up feeling dissatisfied with the whole interaction. So we gave up on yootles.
Decision making is an interesting topic of research. Daniel has thought and written a lot about it. Yootles never caught on much, but Beeminder has a loyal following of people, who use it help accomplish their goals. I made a goal to blog at least once a week in 2021, and I am writing this post today, because I need to write a post this week, and I haven’t done so yet. So I guess it is working :)