Speaker 1: A 14th century parable tells the story of a really hungry and thirsty donkey that stumbles across a bucket of hay and some water. Bewildered, the donkey stares at both and can't quite decide which to have first, the water or the hay. Time passes, the donkey still can't decide. Eventually, the poor donkey dies from chronic thirst and starvation. Or is it actually from chronic indecision? Fast forward to the 21st century and how many of us sometimes feel like that indecision donkey? We make a big deal out of something small, we don't think about the future consequences of our actions and we become paralysed at the thought of making a mistake. As a behavioural scientist with 30 years in corporate life, I've studied many different books and articles on decision making. Most of them will tell you how to make a better or a smarter decision. Very few will tell you how to make a decision, any decision, when you're feeling mentally stuck. But what if by simply understanding why you can't make a decision, you can learn to overcome indecision? Well, anyone can become a confident decision ninja by changing their perspective, by reframing how they think about that particular indecision. And all you need is three simple science-based techniques. But first let's look at the nature of indecision itself. Nearly six billion Google searches tell us that it's not necessarily the most complex of decisions that baffle us. It can be what to wear, what to watch on Netflix, just as much as it can be whether to speak up against wrongdoing, whether to change your job, change your partner or start a new business. It's different for everyone, young or old, rich or poor. My 82-year-old mother finds things more difficult than I do and sometimes vice versa. But what is absolutely consistent across humankind is that crippling fear of anxiety and making the wrong mistake and that craving for certainty. Everybody feels this at some stage. In fact, some of you may feel it now. Raise your hand if you're currently grappling with a decision of any kind. Oh, I see quite a few. A pocket of indecision about indecision over there perhaps. Well, hold that idea and that decision in your mind. It's understandable that this can feel overwhelming because at the end of the day, there's a weight of expectation that you place upon yourself. After all, scientists say that you make at least 35,000 decisions every day. 95% of those are made unconsciously. And then there's also the weight of expectation that other people have about you, as a parent or as an expert in your field. People expect you to have the answer to everything. And in business, it's often the most confident and decisive leaders that get recruited, rewarded and recognised. As consumers, we pay billions every year for expert judgment and advice. It may feel safer to be indecisive and not make a call, but it really does carry consequences, whether it's financial, ethical or social. But the good news is that once you understand why you get into this mental maze of indecision, it's easier to navigate a way out. And it could be any host of different reasons. You may simply not have a strong preference for Rome or Paris on your holiday or to hire Betty or Benny. You may feel that you've got too much choice or, what's worse, too little choice. You may have so much time that you're languishing or so much time that you're just panicking. You may feel under pressure. You feel morally conflicted. You feel everybody's watching you. All of these reasons affect your ability to prioritise. And then there's personality. You're a nice person. You want to keep everybody happy. And we all know how that story ends. And many people are proud. They want to make the perfect decision. And equally, that causes just as many issues. Sometimes, like the indecision donkey, you are convinced that only one answer, either the water or the hay, is the perfect answer. And so when you're in this mental maze of indecision, what determines how long you stay there is actually three inner voices. The thought that this decision of mine, it's just too big, I can't deal with it, or it's just so far in the future, I don't have to deal with it, or even it's just too hard, I don't want to or I'm not going to. So what do you do? Some people might say, walk the dog, sleep on it, use your intuition, phone a friend. But science will point to something else, something more effective, reframing. So what is reframing? Reframing is something that you do unconsciously all the time without even thinking about it. It is a psychological technique where you change your perception of a particular situation. For example, a problem is often reframed as a challenge. A challenge could be reframed as an opportunity. In your youth, a drunken text might even have been reframed as a learning experience. There are many of these reframes that people do all the time. And the logic is pretty clear. If you turn something upside down, inside out, and look at it differently, you gain perspective. You gain a distance from the particular situation and hence an opportunity to move forward. And in exactly the same way, if you take these unconscious ideas that your dilemma is too big, it's too far, it's too hard, and you consciously make yourself feel that it's smaller, sooner, and easier, you will find a way through this maze. So let's take the first of these. The idea that it's too big. Well, I call the proportional frame. Now, my niece is overworked and underpaid. It's her first job. And she has completely magnified out of all proportion this will I go or will I stay decision. So much so that she's avoiding the decision altogether and sitting on the fence. Now, I understand it. I really do. In my career, I had a job offer and I deliberated, delayed so long that they actually rescinded the offer and took it back. This is not a good place to be. So how can you adopt this way of thinking? Well, you reverse the thought. So you take something that's big and you make it feel smaller, just like anyone would do with any large project. In effect, you mentally shrink the decision. So my ninja niece deconstructs the problem. Instead of thinking of the top 10 or 20 most important factors for consideration, just look at the top three. And then critique that idealized outcome. Maybe this job isn't so perfect after all. Less autonomy, longer commute. And by deliberately finding the imperfections in something, you reduce the consequentiality and the magnitude of it in your mind, making it easier to deal with. And then, of course, a decision shared is always a decision shrunk. This shrinking strategy works for all kinds of decisions. In 1969, NASA put man on the moon. That was a huge decision. Or was it? The astronauts will actually tell you that it was a series of thousands of micro moments of indecision that eventually became decisions. And right across industry, we also see this. Researchers from UCLA and Cornell tested the effect of reframing on savings indecision. Is it really possible that telling a consumer to save $5 a day rather than $150 a month, which is, of course, the exact same thing, that really make a difference to people's behavior? Well, it did by a factor of four. Four times as many consumers enrolled in this particular savings program. Why? Because it's easier to think small about big decisions. And it's easier to think about days rather than months. And when thinking about days, even though it might be easier, it's not necessarily better, which leads us to the temporal frame. And again, this idea that the rewards are so far in the future that it's just too much for today's sacrifice. We all know we ought to save for retirement, scroll less, smoke less, network more, and protect the planet. But we are short-term, present-oriented, impatient people. We want everything now. We live in a culture of now. Instant feedback, instant wealth, instant weight loss. And so we procrastinate. I'll solve that problem tomorrow. I'll think about it tomorrow. The only problem with that is, of course, that everyone's thinking about tomorrow. Tomorrow is the busiest day of the year, and it never gets done, and you stay longer in that maze. So how do we shift this thinking, this reverse framing? Well, first of all, remember that idea that you have, that dilemma? Think about it and ask yourself, how will this decision feel in two weeks, two months, two years, or two decades? That's quite hard, but it starts to shift your thinking and getting out of the present mode. Scientists will say, to make it easier, visualize yourself two weeks, two months, two years, two decades ahead. And when you do that, what you're actually doing is you're bringing your future self back to today, so you can make the decision in the moment. And again, scientists have tested this, you know, with virtual reality, avatars, age-progressed photos. And what they have found, that it does impact behaviour, and that people have indicated an intention to eat less, cheat less, smoke less, and save more. And we see this, we see this in sports. Professional golfers use the visualisation technique when they're facing a tricky shot, and they teach it in clinics. And in hospitals, therapists use it with patients undergoing rehabilitation programmes, when they're struggling to see their future selves. And organizations can use it with this very difficult will-I-speak-up-or-bystand decision. In my own experimental research, I found that 92% of employees indicated a willingness to speak up. But when it came to it, only 99% took the first step. Companies make a mistake. They often make big appeals to corporate culture. Corporate culture is a long-term process. We are, of course, short-term, present-oriented, impatient people. They are better off trying to trigger employees in the moment to solve a problem today, so that they visualize themselves helping a colleague or their company in the moment, rather than procrastinating. All of this is underpinned by emotion, which is, of course, the third frame. This idea that it's too hard. That idea that you're thinking of, maybe the consequences you feel are too final. Maybe you feel they're irreversible, and that the stakes are too high. And you fear this regret, humiliation, and shame of making a mistake. I see this everywhere. From CEOs right across the spectrum, you see people burying their heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich, afraid to make a decision, not making a strategic decision, or a merger decision, or an investment decision. So how do we reverse the frame? How do we make something hard easier? How do we make ourselves feel more comfortable making what we perceive as a risky decision? Well, we positively frame the decision. And let's be very clear, a negative decision will never be positive. A redundancy or an end-of-life care decision will never be positive. This is about changing your perception of that particular decision. So let's look to one of Google's most popular searches, which is, will I break up with my partner? And even the framing of that question feels quite binary, break up or don't break up. And that can be a mistake. So rather than looking at things in a binary way, either or, expand optionality. Think about all the alternatives that you may have. Now, Simon and Garfunkel will have you believe that there are 50 ways to leave your lover. I'm not recommending that. I suggest perhaps two or three. And even before you get to this point, you can take a holiday, see a therapist, have a trial separation, have an open marriage. There are plenty of options to consider. But the point of doing this and having more options is that you reduce the sense of fear, finality and foreboding when you're afraid to make that particular decision. And then think about the stories that you're telling yourself. If you choose to tell yourself that 90% of people who break up end up in abject misery, rather than having a shot at the fairy tale, happy ever after ending, it's predictable whether you'll procrastinate and keep your head in the sand. All of this is rooted in the work of Martin Seligman's positive psychology, self-narratives and also Daniel Kahneman's game framing. And nowhere did the world see more powerfully the effect of positive framing than during Covid. Governments, regulators, medical practitioners all over the world encouraged citizens to wear masks with a simple appeal. Masks save lives. It was an appeal to hope, to emotion and to protecting family. And in many cases, it worked. It shifted people out of indecision. Now, if you're still head scratching with that dilemma of yours and thinking, I'm still not sure what I'm going to do about it, I'd like to share with you my own technique that always works for me and I call it the probability test. And it's three very simple questions. And the questions are, if I make this decision, what's the worst thing that will happen? And then I ask, what is the likelihood of this happening? And if that happens, what will I do about it? And the reason that I think that this works is because it replays the three frames. I've already visualised the worst case scenario and thought about it now. I've gone there and I've concluded that the chance of disaster is probably unlikely. So I've shrunk the probability in my mind of this big decision. And because I've created some optionality and choice around what I would do, I feel more positive about it. I feel more confident and able to move forward. And therefore, I've actually just made it easier. At the end of the day, this is all about perspective. A perspective can be changed. Anybody can get out of this maze of mental indecision by understanding why you get in there in the first place and by using these principles of reverse framing. And it can be done in seconds. Indecision is just a transitory phase. Think back of all the decisions you've made in your life, in your 20s, your 30s, your 40s, and I'm stopping there. Most of them have worked out pretty well. So the final reframe is that of indecision itself. If you choose to change the idea that indecision is a paralysing problem and look at it as an opportunity to gain a broader perspective, you really will make not just a decision, but a better decision and a smarter decision. Thank you very much. Thank you.