Purpose
People are creatures of habit, and our lives are often structured around routines. Whether it’s the daily commute, meals, or interactions with family and friends, these routines form the backbone of our daily decision-making processes. However, even within these routines, we face numerous small decisions daily, such as what to wear, where to eat, and what to buy. The purpose of QuickSTEPS is to streamline these habitual decisions, making them quicker and more efficient, allowing individuals to focus on more significant tasks and goals.
The Challenge of the Modern World
Our brain has different systems that provide decision making dependent upon different contexts. The Deliberate System is for the complex, important decisions that involve changing the structure of our lives, such as buying a house, getting married, having children. This system takes a lot of energy and time and as a result is used only when triggered by the Anterior Cingulate Cortex when a thoughtful consideration of making a change is needed. The Automatic system performs the majority of our daily activities. It is efficient and quick, relying on past experiences, learning and memories to select the best solution for a task. These tasks are familiar and do not change frequently. However, this system is less accurate however as it relies on heuristics and other short cut type thinking, resulting in a higher degree of error. This is typically good enough as we go through our routine lives where not much has changed. The final decision system is a reflex based system of the Amygdala. This system causes us to move, react, take action, but it is not a system that can be influenced.
The modern world with its increasing complexity and pace of life challenges these systems. There is a sense of overwhelm as well as decision fatigue that occurs. This impacts our deliberate systems by making them less available as the ACC seeks to inhibit the use of extra energy. It can make daily decisions more difficult, causing a person to decision paralysis. The world is more unpredictable, causing the person to feel less confident about the decisions they are making. A decrease in confidence and an increase in anxiety can negatively impact the Automatic system, resulting in less accuracy with daily tasks.
Function
QuickSTEPs is designed to expedite decision-making by leveraging familiar patterns and memories rather than relying solely on new information or complex decision-making processes. It operates within the framework of Automatic System memory, which means it uses past experiences and established routines to guide current decisions. This approach minimizes the cognitive load and speeds up the decision-making process. As described, this system is error prone, and as result the decisions to be made with the QuickSTEP must be daily, habitual decisions that do not require complete accuracy.
Process
- Initial Setup and Contextual Understanding:
- Identify a struggling moment or outcome you want to improve.
- Frame the desired progress by answering the following questions:
- What is the outcome you are struggling with?
- What are you hoping to achieve?
- How is it going now?
- Does this outcome support other important outcomes?
- What other resources, tools, and people are available to help?
- Constraint and Context Creation:
- Establish context from constraints by identifying possible actions, products, or services.
- Use contrast to create meaningful actions, narrowing down choices to a manageable number of options.
- Selection and Exclusion Process:
- Choose three potential actions/products/services that can help make progress.
- Set a time frame for the selection to satisfy the outcome.
- Eliminate the least desirable candidate.
- From the remaining two, select the least desirable of the two.
- The remaining option is the selection.
- Final Steps:
- Confirm the availability of the selected option.
- Commit to the selection and take action.
- Reflect on why today is the day to make progress and what one change would make the most significant impact.
Example Challenges and Outcomes
Time-Consuming Challenge
- Challenge: Deciding what to wear each morning can be time-consuming.
- Outcome: Minimize the time it takes to choose an outfit by having a per-planned weekly wardrobe. From a prior set of clothing options, the best option for that day can be selected using the QuickSTEP approach.
Inefficient Challenge
- Challenge: Meal planning and preparation can be inefficient.
- Outcome: Minimize the waste of resources to prepare meals by identifying candidates for the week, and then daily decide which of the three selections will be prepared.
Unpredictable Challenge
- Challenge: Choosing a route to work can be unpredictable due to traffic.
- Outcome: Minimize the standard deviation to travel time by selecting 3 different routes and then using real-time traffic updates to determine which is the best route to take that day.
Inconvenient Challenge
- Challenge: Finding a suitable time for exercise can be inconvenient.
- Outcome: Minimize the lack of availability to exercise by scheduling consistent workout times each week by selecting from a group of available times through excluding the times that are least desirable.
Difficult Challenge
- Challenge: Deciding what to eat for breakfast
- Outcome: Minimize the complexity by selecting a group of available restaurants and eliminating the least desirable until the best available is met.
The Role of Exclusion
The primary mechanism by which QuickSTEP aids decision-making is through exclusion. Psychological research shows that excluding unwanted options is often easier than selecting desired ones. This method reduces the cognitive burden and speeds up the process. This is a favorite technique for those whose job it is to help others buy better. In the sales profession, helping customers often includes guiding them through a process of exclusion, narrowing down to a subset of candidates and then selecting the best for the given situation. This is particularly helpful when the decision maker has a history with the different candidates.
Integration with Cambio
To maximize the effectiveness of QuickSTEP, it is beneficial to use it in conjunction with a prior Cambio created for specific tasks. For example, when deciding what to wear, a pre-existing Cambio can provide optimized outcomes and criteria, making the decision faster and more aligned with personal preferences and needs.
Constraints Produce Context
Creating context from constraints helps in narrowing down the decision pathways. Typically, there are only a few viable pathways to achieve a goal, and establishing these pathways helps in making quicker and more efficient decisions. The role of QuickSTEPs is to be a constraint and context provider to the areas of the brain that are weighing the cost and benefits based on prior experience. Although these areas are not providing a full deliberate decision, areas can be employed to participate with the decision making faster, and with more accuracy than without a structured approach.
The Role of Memory and Patterns
QuickSTEPs leverages memory and established patterns to make decisions, reducing the need for extensive new information. This method is particularly effective for routine decisions where past experiences can reliably guide current choices.
Brain Areas Involved
Decision-making using QuickSTEP involves several brain regions, including:
- Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC): Handles cognitive control, working memory, and decision-making.
- Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC): Monitors conflicts and helps adjust behavior based on feedback.
- Orbitofrontal Cortex (OFC): Involved in evaluating rewards and subjective preferences.
- Parietal Cortex: Assists in attention and spatial processing.
- Basal Ganglia (including Striatum): Related to reinforcement learning and reward-based decision-making.
Why QuickStep Works
QuickSTEPs is designed for low-risk, low-reward routine decisions that do not require extensive deliberation. It takes advantage of the brain’s natural tendencies to minimize conflict and risk by using exclusion rather than selection. This approach makes decision-making more straightforward and less anxiety-inducing, leveraging familiar patterns and memories.
Conclusion
QuickSTEPs offers a practical, efficient tool for streamlining daily decision-making. By focusing on exclusion and leveraging memory, QuickSTEP simplifies routine decisions, freeing up cognitive resources for more significant tasks. This approach not only enhances productivity but also reduces the stress associated with daily decision-making, making it an invaluable tool for anyone looking to optimize their everyday choices.