How We Decide

Over the past few months, I have learned something about myself: I am chronically indecisive. I have trouble making even the most unimportant things. You all should see me try to order a sandwich at Subway. I treat a decision that small as if it'll impact the rest of my life.

My friend Tess Hopkins and I found ourselves at Half Priced Books one fine, summer afternoon. We both talk of being indecisive, and so we ventured over to the self help section to pick out our book for this AP Comp assignment. We both picked out a couple of books about getting over indecisiveness, and I kid you not, we had a hard time deciding on which book about indecisiveness we wanted. Tess and I had a darn good laugh about that one. 

Finally, I just randomly chose one. "How We Decide" by Jonah Leher proved to be not only an interesting read, but a very beneficial one for my chronic indecisiveness. Leher has studied neurology from Columbia University in addition to psychology. "How We Decide" was researched thoroughly, and every fact about decision making provided is paired with a study done at top universities and a story about an everyday person facing the issue present. For example, one section was about leaving your brain on autopilot because it normally knows what it's doing. The story that was paired with information was one about an opera singer named Renee Fleming. She has sung a famous and complicated piece of opera hundreds of times, and can normally perform it flawlessly without blinking an eye. Suddenly, Fleming began to think about the mechanics of singing instead of just letting her brain take care of it on autopilot. She began making mistakes while performing, and the thought process became even more involved. After years of singing, Fleming even considered retiring because she felt like she couldn't get her groove back.

The mind is a very complex thing, and as it turns out, decision making is one of the more complex things involved with the mind. As a chronic indecisive, I was happy to learn that I'm not the only one who has a hard time making decisions... even the easy ones. "How We Decide" started off with how to make decisions when you can't make the easy ones. The key is to go with your gut. Every single time, just go with your gut. Pretty soon, your brain will learn which decisions were good, and which were bad. The brain will begin to change its neurological connections in order to better improve one's decision making.

"How We Decide" is a book that I really enjoyed reading. I found, too, that psychology is a very interesting thing. We humans are complex creatures, and we will probably never know everything about our minds. I really enjoyed reading this, and because of this, I'm on the road to recovery from my serious condition of chronic indecisiveness. I'm totally kidding; it's not really that serious, but it is rather annoying. I'd recommend "How We Decide" to anybody.