making better decisions - 3. Tossing a Coin
Dealing with Difficult People
This email is one in a series on decision-making. The first one is an introduction to the series.
3. Tossing a Coin
When I first thought about this process of decision making, the first idea I had from my experience was the idea that when making a yes/no decision, toss a coin, and in the time that it takes for the coin to land back in your hand, you'll know which way you want the coin to land, and so which choice you actually wanted to make.
Reading a more detailed article about this suggests there is even some physiological basis for this approach, and suggests that the more you gather experience and knowledge, the better your intuition, and so the more effective the coin-toss will be in revealing this information.
A bit of searching the internet seems to align on the idea that coin tossing as an aid to decision making emerged in the 7th Century B.C., when coins had the head of state on one side of them, and some kind of ship on the other side, and so the choice was caput aut navis (head or ship).
I'm afraid my knowledge of physics isn't adequate to the task of understanding this scholarly analysis of the physics of coin tossing, but I'm glad to see that you would only expect the coin to land on its edge every 6000 tosses or so, and that the likelihood of a head or a tail is very close to 50:50.
One last study suggested that when deciding by coin toss, people who are told to change from the status quo are happier six months later than those who are told to preserve the status quo.
So the final lesson from looking at coin-tossing to aid in decision making is, if you're uncomfortable with the status quo, be prepared to explore options that will have an impact on that current situation.
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When was the last time you tossed a coin to decide something? Was the coin toss useful in helping you reach a better decision?
See you next time.