A friend (who shall remain anonymous) recently asked me about my process for making my recent job decision. I banged out an email about it, and thought I’d share it with a few edits.

Hey!

Interesting ask. Hm.. I tend to think through quite a few frameworks, but I actually have no ultimate way of reconciling all the frameworks together. I’ll try to lay out the various frameworks for you. Of course, I start with the caveat of “All models are wrong, but some models are useful.”

At the highest level of analysis I look at two frames: the economics frame, and the psychological frame.

In the economics frame I’m looking at things like risks and upside on several axis e.g. financial growth, career capital growth, skills growth, personal network growth. Do I believe that socio-economically I will come out in a better position in this particular choice versus another choice? In the interest of not making this email too long, I won’t elaborate on what each of those axis mean. (Please ask if you want clarification.)

In the psychological frame, I’m looking at whether I am going to be happy. Here I look at our psychological make-up and divide happiness into “flow” happiness, i.e. will I be happy day-to-day doing the work, and “remembrance” happiness, i.e. will I look back at this experience fondly. I also split it into how I feel about the people, and how about feel about the work. I also consider here about my psychological environment outside of work i.e. what will my support network look like? Will I have family and friends?

After looking at all of those variables for each option you’re considering (and making sure you’re not overlooking other potential/plausible options e.g. starting your own venture and/or becoming a choreographer ;) - it will all be very confusing because it will be too many variables.

That’s when I’d try to stop “thinking” about it and start listening to my body. Which do I feel the most excited about when I talk to people about it. Which feels like a better idea when I’m six drinks into the night? Ask your close friends which option you seem most excited about, because we sometimes don’t read our own emotions as well as others do.

The part that probably needs the most clarification is the difference between “flow” happiness, and “remembrance” happiness. It’s a concept I got from Daniel Kahneman’s work, which he explains at this TED talk.

… and that’s it. Thoughts?