Decisions

I have been on a brief sojourn in Frome of late before moving onto Leicester earlier today. Whilst in Frome I went to visit the Wriglesworths: Nathan, Helen and Anna, who were staying in nearby Bath. We spent the afternoon chatting - Nathan and I squeezed in as much football conversation as we legitimately could - and one of the (non-football related) topics that came up was decisions. It was in light of this blog that our conversation veered that way. We wondered how many decisions were made in a day and Nathan confessed that he had made the decision to allow himself to get wet by walking under the overhanging dripping bushes and not pushing me into the road to relieve him of this nuisance. I questioned whether this really was a decision as there was no real likelihood of him actually pushing me into the road; decisions were surely choices between two legitimate choices of action. I had actually chosen to walk on the left of him, which just happened to be drier, as my left ear was partially blocked and I wanted to give him my right ear so that I didn't mishear him: that is surely a more legitimate decision. We got onto the subject of how many decisions in a day we make that are selfish in comparison to selfless and he told me an anecdote about someone who always took the biggest slice of cake and I realised that I often shamefully do that.

At the end of the discussion I decided that I would commit a day to analysing my own decisions and see what information I could garner from such a task, so today I kept a piece of paper in my pocket and noted down every legitimate conscious decision I made. I ignored illegitimate decisions such as the fact that I chose not to murder anyone, run through the streets naked or make a guitar out of a giraffe's intestines: these are courses of action that I would never have taken. I obviously missed lots out and had to be careful not to drive my wife Helen insane by producing a scrappy piece of paper every thirty seconds.

The eventual crumpled list had 75 decisions I had throughout the day. I won't share them all, but here are a few highlights:

Decision 2: To change Ned's nappy or to leave it to Helen.

Decision 7: To apply wax to my hair or to leave it au naturel.

Decision 16: To investigate the pooey manure smell coming from the boot of my car or not to bother.

Decision 25: To wipe my hands on my jeans after washing them or to use the Dyson Airblade available in the public toilet.

Decision 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46 and 47: To pick up Jarvis' soft toy bear that he had thrown from his car seat and then moaned about not having or to leave it lying on the floor.

Decision 45: To choose a CD of my own choice to play on the car journey or to allow Helen to choose the CD.

Decision 59 and 70: To gamble on no one entering while I went to the toilet at my in-laws or to go and find the key so as to ensure I was uninterrupted.

Decision 63: To change channel from the Welsh language channel at my in-laws' house or to leave it on.

As you can see from this selection I had a very complicated day. My analytical approach is to investigate whether my decisions were largely selfish or selfless. My unbiased analysis reckons that 27 of my decisions were neither (things like what t-shirt to wear), 15 were selfish (such as reading the paper rather than playing with my boys) and 33 were selfless (such as changing a catastrophe of a nappy). However, 19 of these selfless acts were the repetitive task of picking up toys that the boys kept throwing to the floor whilst sitting in their car seats and although the awkward position that I had to force my back into to retrieve the soft toy bear and tiger was mildly uncomfortable, essentially this was a sort of selfish decision because if I had not picked them up I would have had two screaming one year olds in the back seat of the car on a three hour journey and that would have been considerably worse, so I shall discount these from my list leaving me with just 14 selfless acts and to be honest these could probably be analysed similarly. So, my findings say that I was selfish 52% of the time today which I guess is not too bad although it is a frustratingly narrow defeat - decision 74 to finish the bottle of wine rather than giving it to someone else proved costly.

However, I have been too simplistic I fear because many of my decisions had a range of motives and many of my selfless decisions were partially influenced by the fact that I knew I was going to be accountable for my decisions to people who read my ramblings. For instance, decision 34 was to get Helen to take over the driving which was a largely selfish decision, but I could feel my eyes grappling for closure and the selfish decision was also a safe, sensible and in some ways selfless decision at the same time. Likewise, selfish decision 29 to quaff the Liquorice Allsorts like they were going dangerously out of date within five minutes was partially motivated by a desire to stay alert whilst in control of a vehicle - that doesn't sound so believable does it.

My study though was not useless. It was useful, if slightly annoying, to weigh up my decisions in this way because it made me examine the habitual way in which I make decisions and helped me to see selfishness in myself that I was pretty much unaware of. It was also interesting to think about the way a family makes decisions and how a lot of decisions are made for you and how a lot of the decisions you make affect more than just yourself. Thousands of decisions are made each day - I decided which car to overtake on the motorway, which child to pick up first, which bit of my dinner to leave till last and to apply a microscope to each of these would leave little time for enjoying the random direction life can often take you in, but I guess each day has a few key decisions which shape the mood and tone of the day and getting them a little bit more right can only be a good thing. I won't do this again, but I'm kind of glad that I did do it once.