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CHAPTER 1
THE HOWS AND WHYS OF DECISION-MAKING
'Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.'
John Lennon
Self-evidently everything in life is a choice. Even the things that don't appear to be choices have choices attached to them, and how you react to them and the paths you choose have ripple effects with sometimes fleeting, but often lasting, consequences. For instance, from the moment your alarm goes off in the morning, you make a choice, do I hit snooze? Do I get up? If I hit snooze, will I have time to shower/eat breakfast, make it to school or college on time? If I choose to skip breakfast maybe I'll be hungry and because I'm focused on that I don't pay attention to something important in class. Maybe that's the thing that the entire exam is on and I miss out going to my first choice university because I dropped a grade. Then I end up getting a job I don't want to do and do it for forty years ...
Obviously that's a slightly extreme example but it does illustrate the point pretty well: every choice you make has a consequence, sometimes tiny, sometimes big, but even lots of tiny, seemingly inconsequential consequences can, over time, create a real and genuine shift. This chapter is focused on highlighting the importance of the choices you make and underlining why and how you should make them.
Ask any adult if they feel any different now to when they were eighteen and the likely answer is that they aren't quite sure who the old person staring back at them in the mirror is. As a teenager there are lots of scientific reasons why you process time differently to adults, and conceptual thinking is something acquired through experience rather than being innate, so seeing the present as an irritating preamble before your real life begins is very easy and entirely understandable; it is not, however, useful to you.
What you do now, the decisions you make right now, regardless of how old you are or where your ambitions may take you, have an impact. By ignoring the present and not making choices you are in fact making a choice. Letting life wash over you without ever making a conscious decision is making the choice to settle for whatever turns up - which isn't necessarily ideal.
Unfortunately for you, little brain worms are constantly munching at the decision-making portion of your mind, making any choices a lot harder than a simple yes or no, and lots of internal and external biases are subtly influencing your decisions. That is to say, if you believe your decisions are logical, you're probably not paying proper attention. Hidden tendencies or preferences distort the decision-making process without us even knowing.
Example: Who shot JFK?
Since Kennedy's assassination in 1963 a veritable cottage industry has grown up dedicated to solving the mystery of his death. Films, TV dramas, documentaries and in the last fifty years or so more than 2,000 books are all desperately trying to persuade us that theirs is the correct account. Each establishes an argument and then presents the evidence to support its case. Or, rather, they all begin with a theory and conclusion and then root out the evidence to support that conclusion.
This is what is known as confirmation bias and it shows a jaw-dropping fissure in how we approach complex questions. Many of our decisions are based not on the material facts, but on the application of our hidden leanings and reasoning that we justify in support of that leaning. That is to say, we approach most decisions with a view and then fill in the blanks to support our decision.
Why is this relevant to you? If your decision to go to university is based on the supposition that that is just what you're supposed to do because of your parents or societal pressure, you will find the arguments to support that decision regardless of whether it makes sense for the career you want to pursue. If you want to work in the leisure industry or in tourism and hospitality, doing a degree in the subject is, in all probability, much less useful than working in the summer as a tour rep, interning and getting experience. Equally, if you come from a background where you make the assumption that university is for 'other people' because your parents and people in your circle haven't gone, you are unfairly limiting your potential based on how you perceive yourself, a perception that is informed by other people's opinions. Not facts. Opinions. But opinion can very quickly become fact if you don't examine it closely.
In his book, Thinking Fast And Slow, the Nobel Prizewinning behavioural psychologist Professor Daniel Kahneman illustrates our two types of thinking - the first is rational, logical, analytical and unhurried; we know it's happening as it happens, such as in an exam when you're 'actively' trying to solve a problem or answer a question. The other is fast, instinctive, intuitive and happens instantaneously without premeditation or forethought; it's you on autopilot. Often the poor choices we make and the biases that drive them are a result of our 'trusting our gut' rather than making an informed, logical choice.
Here's a famous example, which is likely apocryphal, but as an idea it works. Doctors in a study were asked to choose between two types of medicine for 600 people suffering from a fatal disease. Treatment A, which was positively framed as 'saving 200 lives', was dramatically favoured over treatment B, which was negatively framed as 'leaving 400 to die'. If you were paying attention it's obvious that both treatments generated exactly the same result. It's simply that A leads with the good news.
'Heuristics' is the name for the shortcuts we take when we need to make a decision quickly: relying on an innate sense, often based on experience, that certain things just work in certain situations. In essence an often imperfect but usually sufficient solution to a problem. Behind many of our everyday decisions is a subconscious mental arithmetic weighing whether you get the doughnut now or ten doughnuts in an hour's time. Short term gain almost always outweighs longer term gain. It's one of the reasons you leave your homework/ coursework/revision until the last minute in favour of playing Call of Duty or hanging out with your mates.
Even when we understand in our rational brain what delaying doing stuff means, we still readily write off the future; procrastination - 'understanding' the options and then choosing not to do what you ought to do - puts the burden on to tomorrow. Basically it would be like me saying, 'Don't sweat it, Future Edd will take care of that,' by which point, the chances are, whatever you are putting off will seem even bigger and more overwhelming.
Because we are all human and by nature irrational, we can never really be free of our biases but we can learn how to identify them as such. Rather than simply accepting the first thought or instinct you have to commit to a course of action or resolve an issue, you'd be better off taking a deep breath, being really honest with yourself and actively seeking out evidence against those assumptions and whether that 'gut' feel is loaded with bias.
Average everyday folk do not make wholly rational decisions. When problems are framed in terms of emotional gains and losses, our image of probability becomes distorted through the lens of loss aversion - that is, simply put, not wanting to lose out. The distortion is, however, predictable. Prospect theory understands the distortion and can allow us to predict when the sub-optimal decision-making will occur, something which I see all the time in my day job.
FOMO - Fear of Missing Out - this is a thing I hear the young folk talk about, right? It's actually a very real and persuasive influencer. Many of the choices we make accept as fact that an unlikely proposition may be true, even as we acknowledge the likelihood that the real outcome is unlikely to be as dramatic as the potential outcome, we worry that missing out would be worse than that disappointment. In essence we prioritise the potential loss over the likelier gain. We don't like to lose out. To put it in simpler terms, if I told you that there was a party at a friend's house, a pretty low key affair, a few mates, a BBQ and a sleepover - not a wild night but probably good fun and entirely bankable - but the other option was going to stand outside Tesco in Northwich, Cheshire in the rain because Harry Styles and Taylor Swift had been spotted there once, it would seem like an obvious choice to go to the party at a friend's house - to me at least as I have no interest in seeing either of them. However, to many people, as unlikely a prospect as it might seem, the fear of missing out would weight the decision towards standing outside the supermarket.
All of us are prone to these decision-making heuristics because humans are naturally loss averse. We fear loss more than we desire gains. Something tangibly bad or at least just okay seems better than an abstract good - knowing all that should make decision-making a little easier. That is to say, once you get that your brain can't necessarily be trusted, you're going to question it more.
Now, I know a lot of that information may seem a little bit scientific and mind-bendy but it's a very important thing to understand. If you can figure out how and why you make decisions, not only should they be easier to make, it should be easier to make the right decisions. I can't tell you what you should do with your life but I can urge you to really examine the motivations behind the choices you make regarding your academic and career plans.
A lot of students mentally write off huge swathes of options without a second thought - so here's a quick example for you: studying overseas. The vast and overwhelming majority of students in this country don't even consider it; it's not even a choice that comes into their head. Why not? Perception of cost perhaps, homesickness, they will miss their friends, family. All of these are valid but when you examine them closer you can see where the false assumptions come into play.
PERCEPTION OF COST - We all know for sure that US universities are far too expensive to even consider, right? Wrong. Yes, they are expensive but frankly many are on a par with UK universities now, plus there are a wealth of scholarships and bursaries available, and many operate on a 'needs blind basis' - that is to say, if they like you they'll pay for what you can't.
HOMESICKNESS - News flash: as you grow up you will have to move out. There's no way of knowing how you will feel about that until you do it. Putting an obstacle in the way or making a decision based on the perception of how you might feel just doesn't make sense. Fear of the unknown is natural but if approached sensibly it's a calculated risk.
YOU'LL MISS YOUR FRIENDS - Your friends will be off doing their own thing as well. You can't live your life for others and you can't go home again, as Thomas Wolfe so famously said; that is to say, things change. All the things that make your home your home are the people you surround yourself with, but those people will move on to the next phase of their lives and unless you want to be left behind you should too. I guess the point is you'll miss your friends no matter what, because things do change and so do your relationships: if you're lucky, for the better, but you don't want to be the one who never grew up.
FAMILY - No matter where you go or what you do, your family will miss you and they will worry, but fundamentally one would hope they want the best for you and if that means studying overseas they will understand and use it as an excuse to come for a holiday.
This one very small example highlights how an entire set of options is eradicated in one deft blow but not perhaps for any good reason, just an assumption that you're likely to study in the UK. If you want to get the career you want and the life you deserve you need to start taking those decisions seriously. You should go to the best possible place to do what you want to do, not the best place near to your home.
When you approach any of the decisions you'll be forced to make in the near and further future don't be afraid to think as big as you can. Why limit your options at this stage? Throughout your life you will be forced to compromise on any number of things but now, right now, the only person you need to consider is you. This is your life and you need to make sensible choices that will actively benefit your future. So dream big, the bigger the better - your reach should always exceed your grasp and don't be afraid to fail or be told no; it doesn't mean the decision was wrong, it just means you need to find a different route to pursue the same goal.
CASE STUDY
Oliver Jones, LLB, LLM
Oliver Jones is a practising barrister at 4 Paper Buildings, the UK's largest chambers of family law barristers. He is also a part-time Judge (Recorder since 2015). His practice is concentrated on Family Law dealing with all areas of public law and private law relating to children. His cases involve disputes between parents in relation to their children and also care proceedings (when social services intervene in a family to protect the children). He has experience in complex non-accidental injury cases, domestic violence, sexual abuse, neglect, terrorism and child abduction matters. He has been published in Family Law Week, the New Law Journal and has contributed to the Legal Network Television training videos.
ME: From way back in childhood did you always harbour ambitions of law and were the academic choices you made in support of that or was it more of a happy accident?
OJ: Not initially. Initially I wanted to be David Attenborough. Then I wanted to be Richard Branson, and then somewhere along the line of the Richard Branson thing I thought to be a business- man it would be good to do law and that will tee me up for a successful business career. Then when I was about sixteen I did some work experience in family law. It happened that a person my father knew was one of the family partners in a solicitors firm in Covent Garden so I went along to that, thinking, 'Oh family law, it's parasitic nonsense, taking advantage of the misery of others.' But when I actually saw it in practice I realised that is not how it really feels when you're doing it. It's much more dealing with people who are in a terrible mess anyway and helping them find a way out of it. I thought that's quite interesting, it's got quite a human dimension. At that point, the megalomaniac business ambitions of my early teens had subsided anyway and I was more cued up towards a professional life and I thought that was quite interesting. So it was probably really from about sixteen that I thought I'd do law. So I picked A levels that would point me in that sort of direction - although actually you can do anything for law - and then I did a law degree. Which obviously helped ...
ME: You said you can do anything for law. Given the challenges faced by young people trying to get pupillages now, with the Legal Aid bill being cut and so on, is there a particular background that you think would be favoured? Are there certain subjects that more easily make sense to someone reading a CV?
OJ: No. Basically no, not really. You need to get a 2:1; in theory you could become a barrister with a 2:2 but in practice that's rarer than hen's teeth, so you need to get a 2:1, and the more established, better regarded universities tend to produce candidates that dominate the field. It's not necessarily a bar if you are at one of the less renowned universities; it's just that it's harder. But that's not just because of the degree; it's because of the A levels and everything else. In terms of whether you have to do a law degree, that's absolutely not necessary. A lot of people do another degree and then do a one year conversion course. If you do a degree in law then obviously you're getting quite an in-depth education in the way that law is understood, cases are analysed and things like that. Whereas if you do a conversion course, they condense it down to the bare bones over the course of a year and it becomes much more about the practical basis, getting the basic knowledge but without working through the jurisprudence of it. I don't know whether doing a law degree makes you a better lawyer or not. On the other hand there's the school of thought that says going off and doing French, English, History, Science or Maths or whatever else makes you a more rounded person: maybe that's better.
ME: So what did you actually do for your undergraduate degree?
OJ: I did law at UCL as an undergraduate. Then I did Bar School.
Me: And then you went and did your LLM?
OJ: Yes, I went on to get my Masters of Law. After that I did a pupillage for one year. After twelve months of pupillage you are able to practise but you have to secure a tenancy within chambers to work from. That can take more time still and lots of people have to do further pupillages, or 'third sixes' with another set of chambers before they can secure a tenancy.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Is Your School Lying to You?"
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