How Not To Sweat The Small Stuff

In her latest Inner Life column in Good Weekend, Stephanie Dowrick shares about the time she sent out an email and forgot to blind copy the addressees. She said what made her most uncomfortable was the possibility of other people being irritated or thinking her an email idiot. Even though she recognized hers was a trivial mistake, she still went through those awful "if only" moments.

"What other people will think of us is often right at the heart of the problem. We don't only want to do things right, we want to be seen to do them right."

How true.

How many decisions and choices have I made because of what someone thought, or might think, or what I thought they would think, which, when you stop to think about it, is hardly the basis of good decision making.

And then, how many times have I afterwards given myself a hard time for making a poor decision or poor choice, when I could have shrugged it off as stuff that happens, and moved on?

So, how does one avoid sweating the small stuff?

Stephanie suggests asking yourself these questions:

1. Will this matter a day or week from now?
2. Is this hurting someone, or just my pride?

"Being seen to do something less than perfectly may be humbling but it is hardly ever fatal. Buying the wrong kind of orange juice, arriving minutes late, not anticipating every need of your partner or boss: these are inconveniences, nothing more.

The mistakes that do matter are those that hurt other people...Saying something cruel or threatening, overlooking someone's feelings even when you "didn't mean to", trivialising and undermining, being dishonest: that's stuff that warrants a good deal of sweating.

It is...as tempting for some people to sweat too little as it is for others to sweat too much - and generally that is far more harmful."

Think about that the next time you are called on to make a decision.

PS. Want an objective, emotionally detached way to make decisions?

Consider Choose It.

This software uses math to remove the hard work and distracting emotions out of decision making.

It's really easy to use. You go through a simple five-step process.

1. Key in your question (e.g. What career should I take up?).
2. List the possible answers.
3. List the factors that will help you decide (e.g. career satisfaction, career path, flexible enough to enable you to fulfil your family commitments).
4. Using a score of 1 to 100, score each possible answer on how well it meets the requirments of each of the factors.
5. Voila! The best possible answer is presented to you in table form, with a score and bar chart.

What I like about it is that as long as you have considered all possible factors and answered truthfully, you can't make a mistake.

How powerful is that?

Think of one problem or decision you've been losing sleep over, and see for yourself how simple it can be to make a sound decision.

PPS. I used Choose It and confirmed what I'd known intuitively - I'm in the right career for me right now. ;-)