Photo shamelessly stolen from digg.

In the previous Surviving Work entry, I discussed the power of ownership, and the ability to better delegate, as well as increase quality of work life, through assignment of tasks to those who are willing to take responsibility for their success. The assumption there was that people, if given the appropriate choice, will make the right decision more often than not.

I want to write more about choices; the types of choices that we make every day. I want to write about how our understanding of the nature of choices can effect the decisions that we ultimately make, and how the decisions that we make when we are fully informed in regards to choice can, in due course, affect our productivity, our effectiveness, and our happiness at work.

First Law of Choice: You Always Have Choices

To start at the beginning, Dictionary.com defines the act of choosing, as “to select from a number of possibilities; or to pick by preference”. Obviously, most all of us would agree to this definition as suitably describing the act of making a choice. It sounds simple, and many examples that we use to describe making choices do so in such a way as to make the concept of choosing easy and allowable to accept.

For instance, The Girl asked me last Friday if I wanted to go out to eat. I was hungry, and so I told her that, yes, I would like to go out to eat. Just that quickly, probably without thinking, I made a choice. Eventually, we want to understand how those choices that we make in our work environment can help us to work more productively, efficiently, and happily. Initially, though, and most importantly, we must understand that we always have choices. Always.

How many times in conversation with someone have we heard them say, “I don’t have a choice”? Whether they’re speaking about projects or deadlines at work, strained personal relationships, or any other wayward commitment, people believe that their lives are filled and their time is consumed by events they ‘must’ participate in. These ‘must’ commitments often add unwanted and unnecessary stress to life, and that stress, or anxiety, or feeling of being overwhelmed robs us of the control that we have over our own lives. And this often happens with even the smallest of commitments. When the decisions become more important, the idea of ‘choice’ is often the first thing overlooked. But choice is always there.

I stumbled onto a rather appropriate analogy on the way to work this very morning as The Girl and I were discussing the topic. People often take a view of themselves and the course of their lives as that of a train riding down a track. You can’t change course, you can only stop for a while, every so often. In reality we’re like cars, able to turn off of the main road, in order to take the one less traveled.

For instance, take, as an example, a hypothetical commitment that we have recently made at work. Perhaps this commitment is a project, with a very tight deadline, that will require extended extra hours, and a serious focus on our part to complete. Originally, we were enthusiastic about the commitment, but now it’s causing us to put our personal life aside. Too many demands on our time are causing us to be overwhelmed, exhausted, and stressed out. And then we say to ourselves, “I don’t have a choice”. So we continue on with the commitment that we made, resigned to a fate that we think we can not change. But even our inaction is a choice, if only implied. Where we often fail is to stop looking for other choices once we come to this first, easiest, most obvious action of doing nothing. It’s only when we consider all of our choices though that we can make a truly informed decision.

Second Law of Choice: Be Aware of All Choices

Once we realize that we have do have a choice in every matter, regardless of situation, we must set out to determine exactly what those choices are. This is not as easy as you think. Most of us, most of the time make the easiest, most obvious decision without even considering alternatives, or the effects of those alternative choices. We put ourselves on a type of mental autopilot. For example, instead of deciding whether to wake up at the first buzz of an alarm in the morning, or to hit the snooze button, and roll back over, we act automatically. We act by force of habit. If we’re acting under good habits, then we make the right choice. But this isn’t always the case.

Let’s return to our example from above. Our hypothetical project is on a tight deadline, and we aren’t as enthusiastic about is as when we originally committed to it. We’re under quite a bit of stress, and have had to really put aside our personal life to try to complete the project. We say to ourselves, “If I want to complete this project, I need to work overtime. If I don’t, the project will fall behind deadline, and, who knows, I might be fired.” This is hypothetical, but we all might know someone who has experienced such a situation, it may even be us. Despite our contention that we don’t have a choice, based on the First Law above, we know realize that we do, in fact, have choices. But what are they?

The first, most obvious choice is to wok the overtime necessary to complete the project. You may do so with a rededicated commitment to the project, or you may do so with resistance and resentment, all the while stating that you have no choice in the matter, but it’s a choice just the same. A choice is a choice, whether you acknowledge it or not. When you choose to say “I don’t have a choice”, you are playing martyr to your original commitment and a victim to the circumstances that now surround it. Often, we stay with these commitments simply out of a sense of obligation, or integrity, or ‘have to’. But we don’t have to, and in making the choice to think as much, we’re giving the power and control of our life away to someone or something other than ourselves. We’ll likely feel stressed, overwhelmed, and, naturally, out of control. To choose to say “I don’t have a choice” is generally tiring and disempowering, and it ultimately creates a negative impact on your performance and your health. We can teach ourselves to not to fall into this easy trap by stopping ourselves whenever we begin to claim that we don’t have choices. If we remember that we do in fact have the freedom to choose, then we can ultimately consider all options available to us. And in our hypothetical situation, understanding all of our options, and actively choosing to work overtime to complete the project after all other choices have been considered, will have a more positive impact on our happiness and our health than if we passively choose to work overtime by not considering other options.

Always remember though to consider all options. After all, one choice is really no choice at all. However, two, three or more alternatives offer flexibility and provide you with the option of making the best possible choice.

Third Law of Choices: Be Responsible for Those Choices.

Once we’ve unearthed and made ourselves aware of all choices, we need to analyze those choices, and ultimately make a decision. In a perfect world, we decide which of the choices we are considering is most helpful to us, and we act on that choice.

What then becomes of our choices after we make them? Studies show that the biggest factor in employee satisfaction is the degree of control workers have over their jobs, assuming other factors such as salary and hours worked are within a normal range. In summary, we like feeling as if we have a choice as much, or more, than we like the actual choices that we end up making.

When we actively make our own choices, we manipulate cognitive dissonance in a way that is most beneficial to us. No matter what we choose, it seems like a better option than it really is because you we actively chose it. When we passively make choose to take no action, because we perceive a situation in which our choices are minimized, we give away the freedom and happiness of the decision making process, which makes us feel trapped, and powerless. To that end, when we make choices we must do so actively and we must take responsibility for the results of those choices if we intend to be truly satisfied and fulfilled by them.

How do we learn to actively make choices in a constructive way when we haven’t learned to do so in the past? Try this. When trying to make a choice between two options, take a coin, and assign one option to heads and one to tails. Flip the coin. If you’re open and honest with yourself, there will be a moment when the coin is in the air where you find yourself actively rooting for one result over the other. That’s your choice. Make it, and stick with it. If you can be honest with yourself about your innermost thoughts while that coin is in the air, then you should never have to look at the results of the flip.

In Conclusion

I’m a strong believer in the power of choice and in the ability of us as individuals to choose. It has been a topic of conversation for The Girl and I on our ride home from work, discussing our day at work, probably more so than she would like to admit. Because of that, this piece of writing has been sitting in a draft on my desktop for longer than it needed to in the hopes that I would be able to devote the time necessary to the writing of it to adequately express my thoughts on the subject. I am not, however, a writer, and if I have fallen short of that goal, then I am truly sorry. However, I implore everyone to do their own research into the subject of choice as it relates to career. I have never been as happy in my professional life as when I have understood and made choices as I thought best for me, and taken responsibility for the fact that every situation faces me in my daily work life is the result of the choice I have made. To understand such makes me infinitely more satisfied with my work daily, and I implore you to strive for the same understanding.

Ingredients

• 1 Medium Celery Stalk, Diced
• 1 Small Onion, Diced
• 1 Large Tomato, Diced
• 1 15 oz. Can Black Beans
• 1 15 oz. Can White Beans (Cannellini or Great Northern)
• 1 Tbsp. White Vinegar
• Salt & Pepper, To Taste

Instruction

Simply toss ingredients in a large bowl, dust with salt and pepper, and serve. Serves 4-6.

Notes

This is a recipe that’s been getting a lot of play at our house recently. The Girl unearthed it from some magazine or another, and it’s simply one more side dish that can be made on a Sunday afternoon, straight home from the grocery store, and which marinates in its own juices and gets better as the week goes on. Tastes especially good as a protein provider with a sandwich, or as a stomach filler with a light chicken or fish entree.

…while I’ve been gone. Let me just say that I’m soo glad that I’m not one of those professional bloggers. Every once in a while, after a few weeks, if I haven’t posted anything on the site, I begin to get nervous and fidget a lot. I know that I need to post something, hell, I usually have something planned to post, but in my mind, for each day that passes, the next post has to be that much better. And I wilt, like collard greens in the pot, under the pressure.

I feel the need to be witty, and smart, and charming, or at the very least, relevant, but at this point,  I feel the need to simply publish something, anything, to let everyone know that I am, in fact, NOT DEAD. Additionally, so much has happened since I last posted that I’m not sure what needs to be discussed here, on the wedding blog, or not at all.  And I don’t really have the time that I’d like to devote to figuring all of that out, so instead I’m just going to put it all out there for you, and let you pick and choose what you’d like to concentrate on.

My car died, so I got a new one. It’s shiny, and pretty, and it makes me feel special. The Girl and I attended an engaged couples marriage preparation weekend. We liked it. We also went to a cooking class. We liked it, too. We learned new recipes, had a good time, and ate a good lunch. I want to blog about it someday, when I get more time. We had brunch with friends. The Mother and The Future-Mother-In-Law came into town, and The Girl had her wedding shower, and they all had fun, and I was jealous. Our two year anniversary came and went, and The Girl and I agreed that it did not get the attention that it deserves, and that we need to rectify such a situation when we can.

I believe that’s everything. It is neither witty, nor smart, nor charming, nor even relevant, but I am alive, and off the hook for the time being, and for that I am glad.

Ingredients

• 1 lb. Spiral Pasta, Cooked
• 6 oz. Assorted Olives and Red Peppers, Roughly Chopped
• 10 oz. Dry Salami (Try Busseto)
• 4 oz. Gorgonzola, Crumbled
• 4 Tbsp. Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 4 oz. Dried Cranberries
• 4 oz. Pecans, Roughly Chopped
• Kosher Salt, To Taste

Instruction

Cook pasta and set aside to cool. Roughly chop selection of olives, red peppers, and pecans; cut Salami into quartered pieces about one-quarter inch thick. Mix ingredients in a large serving dish. Serves 6-8.

Notes

This is one of the oldest recipes that I remember The Girl and I preparing together. It’s actually something that I put together on the fly, probably after having watched the Food Network right before grocery shopping. There are many, many recipes for Antipasto Salad out there, but I think what makes this special is the sweetness of the cranberries and sweet red peppers as it mixes with the bitterness from the olives and Gorgonzola. Another is the fact that the pasta is almost an afterthought; something to hold the remaining ingredients together. Most of the time we make this recipe even easier to prepare by getting our olives and red peppers together in the deli section of our grocery store, and by using a packaged salad topping called Cherry Cranberry Pecano Salad Pizazz. Most groceries have an olive section in their deli salad bar these days, and the salad topping has been pretty easy for us to find wherever we go, as well.

Additionally, this is the second straight combine and serve recipe, which, if you hadn’t already guessed, is going to be a common occurance.