Should You Do It?

One Way to Look at Decision Making

Friends!

How are you? I hope you’re doing ok. Things are better around here for sure, now that my vacation draws ever closer. (I will be taking next week off from the newsletter, FYI. I plan to do nothing but read and swim, as much as I can.)

In the meantime, I want to talk about something I came across in Jane Friedman’s Electric Speed newsletter, which you should absolutely subscribe to, on top of all of Jane’s other valuable offerings. In last week’s issue, she said she came across a question that helps her make a decision.

Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me?

In the newsletter, she uses this framing to to help decide whether to get involved in TikTok or not, and gah that is just such a good way to look at it, to look at anything. Don’t know if you should take a deal offered to you? To say yes to an offer of representation? To enter a contest or take a class or join a thing? To write one idea or another? Look at it through this lens.

Will your choice make your world bigger, grow your opportunities, or whittle you away with work or stress? Will following one path, writing one kind or book or another, broaden your voice or audience or artistic expression, or will it limit how you can participate in the world and/or how the world sees you? (OR does it even matter how the world sees you????) Will saying yes to everything open doors, or stress you out so much you want to hide away? Do you want to say no out of fear, which diminishes you, or because no protect your already scant resources, allowing you to be as big as you need to be to do the things you really want to do?

Can you even know? Sometimes you can’t know! But it can still help to think about it. Or—AND—it’s not just that you can’t know the outcome. You can’t, of course. But you can think about how your decision will affect your time and resources, regardless of the outcome. Hard things that deplete you can be worth it in the end, of course, but in the end isn’t the only thing that matters. You have to think about the in the middle or at the start.

I understand everything here is vague and theoretical. That applying it to whatever you are thinking about is difficult and opaque and messy. There’s not much I can do about that from my perch in this newsletter. But the next time you’re at a crossroads, I think it will be helpful to think, which path will expand my world, my art, my opportunities? Which path will deplete my resources, my reserves, my influence or influences? There’s not going to be a clear cut answer and you’re not going to know everything you need to know to make the best decision. We never have that. That’s impossible, unless you have a crystal ball. But this reframing avoids the questions **should** I do this? Will I get what I want out of this? Will people judge me for doing this? Will I be successful at this? Will my dreams come true? Is this good or bad? It puts the focus back on you, which is basically the only thing you can control, instead of the future, the payoff, the unknown.

Thanks again to the inimitable Jane Friedman for inspiring this, and for all her great work for writers.

Stay safe, friends,

OXOXOX
Kate