Advocate I
Sharing this here in the hope that it’s useful for any of us with our decision making.
“Decide” when you trace it back to its latin roots means “kill choice”. One of the biggest challenges we‘ve come across in every area of our lives - from where we live, to how we setup our garden, to the vehicle we bought, and now what we put in it, is that we are drowning in a sea of almost limitless choice. Decision fatigue is a real thing, as i’m sure many of us have experienced, and so I wanted to share the simplest set of questions that we use in our life and work.
When building technology (hardware or software), we go through a process of listing out functional requirements (what does the technology need to do), before writing up the technical requirements (how is it going to do it). So for instance “need to be able to get myself out of soft sand unassisted“ would be a functional requirement for a trip to North Africa (for us). Depending on where we’re going, there are a number of technical solutions (winch, recovery plates, or a chinook helicopter with support crew). Once we’re clear on the technical requirements (recovery plates, for instance), then we can make decisions about vendors (e.g. MaxTraxx).
In every area of our lives we see so many costly and avoidable mistakes being made by conflating these three things. My wife and I can’t afford to drop even $30K on a vehicle and setup right now. We gave ourselves a total budget of 10K, and the only way we could achieve this was by being ruthless about the choices we made.
In order to document and prioritise our requirements, we use a simple four step process: Must > Should > Could > Won’t
This is a well used framework that engineers in the world’s largest technology companies use on a daily basis.
To provide an example of how we used this to make a decision about a vehicle to buy (in France, in the middle of a pandemic), here is what we came up with.
MUST
We are now going through exactly the same process with our interior build, and I have to say that the time spent thinking about our requirements is ensuring that we are spending considerably less time researching all of the potentially relevant options, and have been able to narrow our search to only that which we actually need.
Anyway, sharing this in the hope that it’s helpful to some. We use this process for every major decision we make. It not only speeds things up, but helps us to more easily find potential points of misalignment at the earliest stage so that we can resolve them before we get any deeper into the process. And for those of us who aren’t planning alone, having a clear process for decision making clearly has the potential to not only save an immense amount of brain damage, but nights alone on the couch as well.
“Decide” when you trace it back to its latin roots means “kill choice”. One of the biggest challenges we‘ve come across in every area of our lives - from where we live, to how we setup our garden, to the vehicle we bought, and now what we put in it, is that we are drowning in a sea of almost limitless choice. Decision fatigue is a real thing, as i’m sure many of us have experienced, and so I wanted to share the simplest set of questions that we use in our life and work.
When building technology (hardware or software), we go through a process of listing out functional requirements (what does the technology need to do), before writing up the technical requirements (how is it going to do it). So for instance “need to be able to get myself out of soft sand unassisted“ would be a functional requirement for a trip to North Africa (for us). Depending on where we’re going, there are a number of technical solutions (winch, recovery plates, or a chinook helicopter with support crew). Once we’re clear on the technical requirements (recovery plates, for instance), then we can make decisions about vendors (e.g. MaxTraxx).
In every area of our lives we see so many costly and avoidable mistakes being made by conflating these three things. My wife and I can’t afford to drop even $30K on a vehicle and setup right now. We gave ourselves a total budget of 10K, and the only way we could achieve this was by being ruthless about the choices we made.
In order to document and prioritise our requirements, we use a simple four step process: Must > Should > Could > Won’t
This is a well used framework that engineers in the world’s largest technology companies use on a daily basis.
To provide an example of how we used this to make a decision about a vehicle to buy (in France, in the middle of a pandemic), here is what we came up with.
MUST
- be true 4x4
- have automatic transmission
- have strong international service infrastructure
- have high gvwr
- be able to attach a full size rtt
- be able to attach a roof rack
- have high safety for two dogs
- have space for dogs in the cab
- be easily modifiable for overlanding
- have power steering
- be able store bikes inside
- Be able to store enough food and water and emergency gear for one month
- be able to fit in a standard shipping container
- Be able to be parked undercover at standard heights
- have Air-conditioning
- have solid maintenance records
- not have windscreen damage
- fit in a standard parking space
- be able to sleep inside
- be diesel
- have a relatively narrow road profile for narrow roadways
- have central locking
- have high towing capacity.
- not have carpet
- not have excessive paint damage
- have auxiliary power
- be able to cook inside
- have at least one additional seat
- have heated seats
- have a long range tank
- be an exotic or hard to find car marque
- be clapped out
- have excessive rust
- require any mechanical work to get registered
- smell
- have been excessively modified
- be a garish colour
- have been in major accidents
- have been recalled
- be within 100km from our home (because we were not able to drive further than that at the time)
- have a minimum three month warranty, with the option to pay for a longer warranty
- be sold by a dealer or a mechanic (because they would be able to be help us with the paperwork)
- be able to be paid for with an American credit card (because we had limited cash and a hell of a lot of credit)
- cost no more than €7500 on road (because we had other financial priorities, and the more we spent on the car, the less we would be able to spend on outfitting it)
We are now going through exactly the same process with our interior build, and I have to say that the time spent thinking about our requirements is ensuring that we are spending considerably less time researching all of the potentially relevant options, and have been able to narrow our search to only that which we actually need.
Anyway, sharing this in the hope that it’s helpful to some. We use this process for every major decision we make. It not only speeds things up, but helps us to more easily find potential points of misalignment at the earliest stage so that we can resolve them before we get any deeper into the process. And for those of us who aren’t planning alone, having a clear process for decision making clearly has the potential to not only save an immense amount of brain damage, but nights alone on the couch as well.