A visual summary of the popular Ted Video. http://www.ted.com/talks/ruth_chang_how_to_make_hard_choices?language=en

1. How To Make
Hard Choices?
~RUTH CHANG
Key Takeaways from the Popular Ted Video
Submitted By Aaisha Modi (PGP30410)

2. 7. Conclusion
1. Understanding hard choices
2. Hard choices are hard because you are stupid?!
3. Paradox of Hard Choices
4. Dynamics of Value
5. Discovering the latent power
6. Way forward
So, what is in it for you?

5. Deepika Padukone? Anushka Sharma?
Whom to Marry?

7. Apparently, yes – associated with agonizing,
hand-wringing, the gnashing of teeth!!!
So, are hard choices big, momentous and
related to things that “matter”?

8. In reality?!

9. Let us put things in Perspective..
Easy choices
One alternative is better
than the other in all
aspects. The choice, to a
rational mind, is obvious.
You agonize over where to stay – staying might give you
emotional strength from family while shifting may give you a
financial high – a hard choice and a big decision to make
Hard choices
One alternative is better in
some ways, the other in
other ways, but neither is
better than the other overall.

10. Let us put things in Perspective..
BUT! Not all hard choices are as big!
Decision about breakfast - Maa-ke-haath ka healthy poha
or cold coffee & choco chip cookies?
Effectively translates into choice between health and taste.
However, neither is better than the other overall - a HARD
choice

11. If you can make
small hard choices,
You can make the
big ones too!

12. So.. What If?
Tom Cruise had
become a
Priest Instead?

13. What If?
George Clooney
Continued as
Insurance
Salesman?

14. Right after school – there is a course that interests you and there is one that
Mummy-Papa and neighbour-ke-parents want you to take. In their words –
“Bubbly ki CTC is Rs 1 cr! Do you want to earn just a quarter of it?”
So, how do you decide?
You erase your year-old designs off your white board and weigh the pros and
cons of both courses, along with visiting several astrologers (because obviously,
they know what is going to be good for your future)
Eventually?
• Take the safest option – “Varna shaadi kaun karega?”
• Sooner or later, you realise that your chosen path was not meant for you
• So you either accept what you are and just exist or start afresh
You might just have killed the next Dhoni, Asha Bhosle or Shahrukh Khan!

15. Why take up the easy option first? Because you are stupid?
NO !!!
It was the fear of unknown - a common motivational default in
dealing with hard choices; However, it rests on a misconception
It's a misconception to think that one alternative really is better than
the other, and that as you're too stupid to know which, you might as
well take the least risky option
Hard choices are hard not because of us or our ignorance;
they're hard because there is no best option

16. Paradox of Hard Choices
Now, if there's no best option, then the alternatives must be
equally good!
If that is right, just flip a coin and do what the coin has to say!
Marry the one that the coin favoured, live where the coin wants
you to and choose you career on the basis of a heads/tails
Don’t feel it’s right?
Well, you’re RIGHT about that! 

17. Marketer or Consultant

18. Marketer or Consultant
Does this Make this job better?
-MAY BE NOT!

20. Two jobs - neither is better than the other, nor are they equally good
How do you choose then?
Is the choice itself problematic and its comparison impossible?
Not like we're trying to choose between two things that can't be compared –
not comparing chocolates and pens
What is the issue? What are we doing wrong?
Decoding the Paradox

21. Decoding the Paradox
What’s wrong? An unthought-of and unreasonable assumption
That values are like scientific quantities (length, mass and weight)
If you compare your weight with your friend’s, there are only three possibilities- you
weigh more, your friend weighs more (to your delight) or both of you weigh equal
Values – a completely different ballgame!
What matters to us – own solace, interests, a child's delight, the love you have for your
partner — can't be expressed or represented by real numbers
Hence, there's no reason to believe that in hard choices, one alternative is better,
worse or equal to the other
A new fourth relation beyond being better, worse or equal, exists.

22. Dynamics of Value
Values are ‘on a par’
In the same league, but very different in type
‘The world of is’
(the world of lengths and
weights)
is unlike
‘The world of ought’
(the world of choices)

23. MATTERS WHICH ONE YOU CHOOSE, but
that doesn’t mean one is better than the other
That’s why it was tough in the first place!

25. A world full of only easy choices would enslave us to reasons
If you think about it, it's incorrect to think that the reasons given to
you dictated your choice of hobby, job or house!
In reality, you faced alternatives that were on a par — hard choices — and
you created reasons for yourself to choose that hobby, house and that job
It's when faced with hard choices, that you exercise your normative power
– the power to create reasons for yourself – which develops you into the kind
of person that you are

26. When we make hard choices we decide certain things - Here's
where I stand. Here's who I am. I am for marketing. I am for cold
coffee and cookies.
Its just not supported by reasons served on a plate, but by those created by
our own selves
When we create reasons to justify being a certain kind of person, we
wholeheartedly become the people that we are - the authors of our own lives

28. Look for reasons within: Who am I to be?
Be an engineer who chooses to pursue marketing & has
chocolates for breakfast
OR
Decide to study commerce, start your own venture &
have healthy breakfast
The choice depends on only one thing –
You yourself!

29. Conclusion
• Hard choices could be small or big
• You are NOT stupid
• There is no real BEST option when hard choices exist
• The only thing that matters is which alternative you choose
• Don’t doubt the rationality of your decisions –
they are supported by reasons that matter most –
YOUR reasons!

30. Thank You
You are the artist of your life – do not be a
drifter;

31. A Course by Prof Sameer Mathur for PGP-MBA students
@professormathur
IIM Lucknow