Ask Yoda—You May Already Know the Answer

I learned this technique at a weekend seminar in the late 1970s led by Nathaniel Branden, one of my favorite authors. Branden believed that we often already know the answers to questions we have been deliberating and agonizing over. We simply have trouble allowing ourselves to hear them.

There were about 100 people at the seminar. At one point, Branden turned down the lights and had everyone sit comfortably on the floor. He asked each of us to focus on one important question about our life. Over the next ten minutes, he helped us relax and clear our minds of everything except that question.

At the time, I was attending business school in Boston and facing a major life decision. After graduation, do I want to return to my hometown of Chicago or move to Los Angeles? Chicago offered my family, my friends, familiar surroundings, and a good job waiting for me. I had never lived in Los Angeles, did not know anyone there, and had no job offers. But Los Angeles represented sunshine, adventure, and the unknown. I had been debating the decision for nearly a year without reaching an answer, so that became my question during the seminar.

Branden told us to imagine the wisest and most trustworthy person in the world standing in the distance—someone who completely understood us, knew the answer to our question, and would never deliberately steer us wrong. Some people may have imagined Einstein, Jesus, a parent, or a trusted friend. I imagined Yoda, the small, ancient, and extremely wise Jedi master from Star Wars.

He then told us to imagine walking toward this person and watching the figure become clearer as we got closer. When we finally reached the person, we were supposed to ask our important life question directly. So I asked, “Yoda, should I move to Chicago or Los Angeles?” Instantly, without hesitation, Yoda answered, “Los Angeles.”

After nearly a year of agonizing, Yoda gave me the answer in about three milliseconds. He knew what I wanted to do and what I believed would be best for me. There was no uncertainty in his answer. Unless Yoda had actually materialized in that seminar room, the answer could only have come from me. Yoda was me. I already knew the answer, and I had probably known it for a long time. I moved to Los Angeles, and it turned out to be a great decision.

I still “ask Yoda” when I am struggling with an important life question. I relax, clear away the arguments that have been circling in my head, imagine the wisest person I can, and ask the question directly. The answer often arrives immediately and with surprising clarity.

Yoda’s answer is not automatically correct. It is not a message from some all-knowing external source. It is my own answer. I may still need to examine the facts, consider the consequences, and decide whether to follow it, but Yoda is rarely wrong.

If Logic Fails, You May Still Know the Answer

In the phrase “Ask Yoda,” I described Yoda as my inner wisdom—the part of my mind that processes my experiences, values, observations, and knowledge below my conscious awareness. When making a decision, I sometimes receive two different answers. One comes from my conscious logic—the facts and step-by-step reasoning I can identify and explain. The other comes from Yoda—my inner wisdom or intuition. Usually they agree, but sometimes they argue.

Consider a race between a rabbit and a turtle. The rabbit runs twice as fast, but the turtle gets a ten-foot head start. When the rabbit travels ten feet to reach the turtle’s original position, the turtle has moved five feet. When the rabbit travels those five feet, the turtle has moved another two and a half feet. When the rabbit travels two and a half feet, the turtle is still one and a quarter feet ahead. Continue this reasoning forever, and conscious logic seems to prove that the rabbit can never pass the turtle.

Yoda immediately says, “That can’t be right. A rabbit running twice as fast will obviously pass the turtle.” Yoda may not be able to identify the flaw, but he knows the conclusion cannot be correct. If Yoda knows the conclusion is not correct, that means I know it.

When conscious logic and Yoda disagree, which one is correct? Either one can be wrong. Conscious logic can fail because I used a false assumption, overlooked important information, or framed the problem incorrectly. Yoda can fail because of fear, prejudice, wishful thinking, or incomplete experience.

When conscious logic and Yoda agree, I make the decision and move forward. When they disagree, I do not blindly follow either one and I do more analysis.

Watch Out for “I Don’t Know”—Because You Probably Do Know

Pay attention to how often you or someone around you says, “I don’t know.” The phrase is generally used in two different contexts. One is no big deal. The other damages self-confidence and can lead to confusion, helplessness, and inaction.

I Genuinely Don’t Know the Answer

I may be asked a simple factual question: “Do you know whether the Cubs play tomorrow?” In that situation, saying “I don’t know” is harmless and accurate. However, I prefer not to stop there. I would rather say, “I don’t know. Would you like me to find out?” The first sentence acknowledges that I lack the information. The second does something about it. Still, a simple “I don’t know” is perfectly reasonable when I genuinely do not know a fact.

I Know the Answer but Am Hiding It Behind “I Don’t Know”

The dangerous version appears when I say, “I don’t know what to do,” about an important life situation. Often, I do know what to do—or at least know the next step—but I am afraid of the consequences.

I remember talking with a good friend about a problem involving a youth hockey team I was coaching. I told him, “I have two parent assistant coaches assigned by the hockey association. They are angry people. They scream at the kids, use swear words, intimidate players, and yell at referees. I am afraid one of them will eventually hit a kid or a referee. They are angry, dangerous people, and I don’t know what to do.”

I heard myself say “I don’t know.” I challenged it.

If I had left “I don’t know” unchallenged, it would have damaged my self-confidence, created a sense of helplessness, and allowed a terrible situation for the kids to continue.

The truth was that I knew exactly what to do. I needed to tell the two assistant coaches to clean up their behavior and remove them if they refused. I was afraid to do that because they were not only parents of players but also good friends with the hockey director who controlled the coaching positions. I feared a screaming confrontation with the two coaches and the possibility that the hockey director would remove me instead.

“I don’t know what to do” really meant, “I know what I need to do, but I am afraid of the consequences, so I am procrastinating.”

I hear this dangerous version of “I don’t know” all the time:

• “I hate my boss, I don’t know what to do.” This may really mean, “I know I need to choose among confronting him, changing how I respond, reporting the problem, tolerating it, or finding another job. I do not like any of those options.”
• “My mother-in-law constantly drops by unannounced, and I don’t know what to do.” This may really mean, “I know I need to establish a boundary, but I am afraid of the conflict it may create.”
• “I have a lot of credit card debt, and I don’t know what to do.” This may really mean, “I know I need to examine my spending, stop adding to the debt, and create a repayment plan. I do not want to face the numbers or make the necessary sacrifices.”

In each case, the person may not know the complete solution, but probably knows the next step. Replacing “I don’t know” with a more accurate statement exposes the actual obstacle: fear, unpleasant choices, sacrifice, or procrastination.

When I hear myself say, “I don’t know what to do,” I ask, “Is that really true?” The answer is often, “Not true, I know exactly what to do.”

Difficulty Deciding May Mean Both Choices Are Good

Some decisions are easy to make, and some are not. Easy decisions usually result from the alternatives being nowhere close to equal. For example, I may be deciding whether my family should go on a picnic tomorrow, but the forecast calls for rain, wind, cold, and a tornado warning. If I assigned each choice a “value to my life” rating from 1 to 100, going on the picnic might receive a 1, while staying home would receive a 100. That is an easy decision.

Other decisions are much harder. For example, I might be evaluating two vacation destinations and simply cannot decide which one to choose. In the past, I created a great deal of stress for myself. I wondered why I could not make the decision and whether something was wrong with me. I assumed I must need more information, so I talked to more people and read more reviews. I worried that I would make the wrong choice and my family would hate it. I procrastinated, making the airline tickets and hotel rooms more expensive, and sometimes even woke up in the middle of the night thinking about where we should go.

I greatly reduced my stress when I realized that the primary reason I was having trouble deciding was that the choices were nearly equal. The problem was not that one destination was right and the other was wrong. Both destinations were fantastic, and my family and I could have a wonderful time at either one. There was no hidden perfect answer waiting to be discovered. I just needed to choose.

Now, when I have carefully considered two alternatives and conclude that they are equally good, I stop searching for a difference that may not exist. Sometimes I simply flip a coin. Difficulty making a decision does not always mean I have overlooked something. It may mean either choice is a good one.

That Is a Blue Straw Problem

I had a good friend planning a big wedding. There were a million things to think about, including the invitation list, venue, drinks, hors d’oeuvres, dinner, speeches, first dance, transportation, seating charts, on and on. At one point my friend was trying to decide on the color of the straws for the drinks and showed me a blue one and a red one. I remember laughing and replying, “Are you kidding me? Nobody will care. It’s going to be a great wedding. Relax and enjoy it.” My friend got it, lightened up, and we now joke about a decision of this nature as a “Blue Straw Problem.”

Whenever I find myself stressing over some issue or decision that is very minor, I will often think, “Wow, another Blue Straw Problem.” It reminds me to either forget the issue or make a quick decision, perhaps flip a coin.

Blue Straw Problems don’t have to be as silly and minor as the color of a straw. Should I add three more phrases to this book, or six, or ten? Or none? Stressing over that decision is actually just stopping the completion of the book, and a few phrases more or less won’t make any difference.

It’s a Blue Straw Problem.

Start With the Best Possible

A friend of mine wanted to buy a new computer monitor. Since I was in a computer-related business, he asked for my help. He wanted to find the “best” model. He had read a variety of trade magazines and diligently tried to understand all the features. We went to a tech store together, and he looked at monitor after monitor, asking the salesperson lots of questions. After an hour, we left the store—no monitor purchased.

A few weeks later, my friend again asked me to go monitor shopping, and away we went. Another store, more monitors, more questions, and more confusion. Again, no monitor was purchased.

A monitor was just not worth all the time and effort my friend was putting into it. There had to be a better way to make a good decision more quickly. I developed an approach: Start with the most expensive model and, if it is within my price range, buy it. If it is too expensive, apply the same test to the next most expensive model, and continue until I find one within the budget. I think of this process as “start with the best possible.”

This process has served me well. It is pragmatic. It stops the “analysis paralysis” and allows me to make decisions very quickly. Applying this approach to my friend and his monitor, we could have picked one out in 10 minutes. It would have worked just fine and been within his budget. His way had led to weeks of shopping and no monitor.

I know that the most expensive product is not always the “best” product. I also know that there may be a cheaper version that would work fine. But if it takes two weeks to find that “perfect fit”—the model that does what I want for the least money—is it really cheaper?

The “start with the best possible” approach allows me to make decisions very quickly, and most of the time I get a product that works. I also use the approach for projects that require multiple product decisions.

I wanted to build a 17,000-square-foot custom office building for my company. There were hundreds of decisions to make—what type of roof, windows, flooring, ceiling, bathrooms, heat, etc. If I tried to understand and evaluate each of these choices, I would be overwhelmed.

I had a consultant helping me with the project, and I told him to select the highest-quality product that fulfilled the basic function. When selecting flooring, we needed durability and low maintenance, not fancy. So pick the most durable product, not the prettiest.

I did not have the time or expertise to decide on each of the 250 or so products. The consultant took the “best possible” concept and created a total construction cost estimate, which was a little higher than my budget. Rather than look at all 250 products, I asked him, “Where can we save $50,000?” He quickly selected a few items where we could downgrade and get to the number.

I ended up with a great office building while saving enough of my time to run the company profitably and enjoy time with my family.

Throw It Against the Wall and See What Sticks

The phrase “Throw it against the wall and see what sticks” is one of the most useful concepts for me. I use it to mean: Try a lot of different ideas, keep the ones that work, and don’t get stopped by overanalyzing. It is another way of expressing the title of this book, If It Makes Sense to You, Try It. I have included this somewhat redundant phrase because, for whatever reason, I seem to remember “Throw it against the wall and see what sticks” more often than the book title.

In my software business, I remember trying to decide where to spend our marketing dollars. Like all companies, we had many choices, including magazine ads, direct mail, Google pay-per-click, trade shows, hiring more salespeople, and more. We gathered data about each choice and had many meetings debating the pros and cons. The conclusion of one meeting might be that we needed more data for the next meeting. The underlying assumption was, “If we spend enough time and brainpower on this decision, we will eventually make the correct choice.” This approach led to doing no marketing at all while we endlessly debated.

This is often called “analysis paralysis”—overthinking a decision to the point where no action is taken. The concept of “throw it against the wall and see what sticks” helped me act immediately. I would pick one of the marketing ideas and try it. I would measure the results and see whether it actually worked. I let the marketplace decide whether it was a good idea. If it produced good results, I did more of it. If it failed, I quickly tried the next idea.

I find the “see what sticks” approach much less stressful and more productive. However, I had to learn to become comfortable with mistakes, bad decisions, and failure. “See what sticks” often means: Try idea one and fail. Try idea two and fail. Try ideas three, four, and five and fail. Try idea six, and it works, so do a lot more of it. Lots of failures before success.

Failure and mistakes are no big deal for me now because I understand that they are part of the process. I think people often get stuck doing nothing and overanalyzing a decision because they are afraid to let the world see them fail.

Don’t Make Decisions Today You Don’t Have to Make Today

I used to make a five-year plan for my company because I had read in many business books what a good idea it was. I would spend many days working on it, refining it, and reviewing it with staff. However, what I did not do was actually follow it for very long.

The problem was that after doing the first item or two, the world changed. Perhaps the iPhone was released, or some other new technology emerged that we had to adapt to. I had wasted a lot of time creating a plan that was impossible to follow. This led me to create the phrase “don’t make decisions today you don’t have to make today.”

I contemplated writing this book for a long time. One of the things that stopped me from starting was trying to make too many future decisions. “Which phrases should I include? What friends should I talk to? Who will publish it? Who will help market it? How about an editor, better find that now, paperback or hardback? On and on.” The only thing I actually needed to decide immediately was to stop planning and start writing the book. I could make all those other decisions in the future.

I may feel stressed and want to go for a run, but I think, “What will I do after the run?” I don’t have to decide at that moment, just go for a run and then figure the next thing out. No telling what I might think of during my exercise.

When planning a vacation, I used to try to decide what places we would visit every day, which restaurants to eat at, and many other details. It was very stressful trying to make dinner reservations for 9 nights. I no longer make all those future decisions today. Events will change, and we may stumble across a great place once we get there. Not making decisions today that I do not have to make today has made vacation planning way easier.

I’m not saying never plan at all, just reduce the planning to those decisions that really have to be made today. When working on a vacation, I obviously have to select a destination, buy some airline tickets, perhaps rent a car, and get a hotel. But where to eat on day number 3 is not a decision that needs to be made today.

Decisions Need a “Switchover Moment”

I have many tools that help me make major life decisions, several of which are included in this book. It is important to use those tools, but at some point I must make the decision, stop analyzing, and shift my attention to making the decision work. If I continue to reanalyze it, I undermine my self-confidence, increase my stress, and may even reduce the chances that the decision will work because I am spending my energy remaking it instead of implementing it.

Every important decision needs a “switchover moment”—the point when the decision is made, the analysis stops, and the focus shifts to making the decision work.

I learned this principle from a longtime professional hockey coach. During one of my early seasons coaching youth hockey, I was head coach of a team of 17- to 19-year-old boys in Los Angeles. Halfway through the season, the Los Angeles Kings hired an experienced coaching consultant to help the professional team. In addition to working with the Kings, he volunteered his time to help with my team.

I was twenty-five years old and had only two years of coaching experience. He had been coaching for forty years and was advising professional coaches. Clearly, he knew far more about coaching than I did. Before long, I was no longer really the head coach—I was his assistant. We ended up winning a national championship.

The day before the championship game, he asked players, coaches, and even parents for their opinions about our strategy. He listened carefully to everyone. The next morning, however, I approached him with another idea. He quickly cut me off and said, “I have made my decision about the strategy for this game. Here is what it is, and here is what I need you to do to help me implement it.” He then explained the strategy to every player and made sure each one understood his role. If anyone suggested a different approach, his message was always the same: The decision has been made. There is no more debate. Let’s make it work and win the game. That coach showed me how powerful a switchover moment can be. Here is how I use it:

• I choose a specific date and time to make the decision. Until then, I gather information, consider the alternatives, and listen to other opinions. At the switchover moment, the analysis ends and implementation begins.
• I make the switchover moment clear and definite. I may even put it on my Google Calendar and treat it like any other important event: meeting at 9:00, dentist at 10:00, make the decision at 11:00. Once 11:00 arrives, I switch from deciding to doing.
• I use the switchover moment to stop second-guessing myself. It is natural to reconsider an important decision. When I catch myself doing that, I remind myself that the switchover moment has passed. My job now is to make the decision work.
• When other people are involved, I make sure everyone knows when the switchover will occur. Before that moment, I want their questions, objections, and opinions. Afterward, I need them to support the decision and help implement it.
• When I managed my software business, switchover moments were difficult at first. I repeatedly had to remind my team that we had finished analyzing the issue and I no longer wanted more opinions. Over time, longtime employees began asking me, “When is the switchover moment on this one?”

Of course, switching to implementation does not mean blindly sticking with a decision when important new information appears. If the facts materially change, I may need to reconsider it. But discomfort and doubt are not new information.

I am not a robot, and I sometimes forget to follow my own steps. When I fail to do it with a critical decision, I pay a price. I worry about the decision throughout the day and sometimes lie awake at night analyzing it all over again. My stress rises, but I accomplish nothing. When that happens, I tell myself, “The switchover moment is right now.”

The Devil You Know or the Devil You Don’t Know

The phrase “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know” has been around for over four hundred years. It implies that you should always stick with the current problem because you don’t know what problems a switch would create. I like to think of it as “The Devil You Know or the Devil You Don’t Know.” When I am considering replacing an employee or product because of its flaws, it reminds me that the replacement will also have flaws. I just don’t know what they are yet.

I ran a software company for 40 years. Our product was used by hotels as the primary system to run the property. Many times a customer would get frustrated because we did not have a particular feature they wanted, and they would buy a different product.

I would check in with the former customer about six months after the switch, and about 75% of the time they would tell me something like, “We hate the new system, it solved that one problem, but it doesn’t do about 15 things that your system did well.” They had switched from the devil they knew (my system with one flaw) to the devil they did not know (the other system with 15 flaws). They had spent $50,000 or more to switch to an inferior system because they didn’t consider what flaws the “new devil” would have.

When I start to become unhappy with an employee or product, it is frequently because of one issue—perhaps they are often late for work. I can get tunnel vision on this one flaw and forget the fact that when the person does show up, they do fantastic work. The phrase “The Devil You Know or the Devil You Don’t Know” helps me remember to get out of the tunnel and look at the complete set of pros and cons of the current person versus the pros and cons of a new person.

The problem is that I am well aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the current person, but have no idea what the new person’s will be. I do know they will not be “perfect”—they may show up for work on time but do a mediocre job.

I will still replace an employee or product if there are a number of serious problems. However, I fully expect some problems from the replacement, hopefully just fewer of them.

Pick Your Geography, Not Your Job

One of the important decisions in life is what job or career to pursue, a question frequently asked during high school and college. I can remember being very unclear about the answer. However, I was very clear about where I wanted to live—my “geography.”

When I was in graduate school in Boston, I still was not clear about what career I wanted. I was considering teaching, finance, marketing, sales, and many other things. However, I was certain that I was tired of Boston, tired of winter, and wanted to move to California. As I continued to worry about the career choice, I became very stressed and still could not come up with a clear answer. I ended up moving to Los Angeles without a job, and it was a great life decision. This experience led me to form the concept “Pick your geography, not your job.”

After about nine years in Los Angeles, I fell in love with skiing and the mountains. I frequently made the six-hour drive to Mammoth Lakes to ski. When I was driving from Los Angeles to Mammoth, I was very excited. Every time I drove back, the closer I got to Los Angeles, the more unhappy I became. It was clear that my choice of geography had changed from beaches to mountains. I remembered that picking my geography instead of my job was an important life principle that had worked for me before. Without a great deal of stress, I quit my job and moved to Vail, Colorado, where I still live today.

I have coached youth hockey for more than thirty years and have had the opportunity to talk with many young people about their career choices. I have found that most could not give me a clear answer about a career, but virtually all of them could quickly tell me whether they loved cities, mountains, beaches, or Europe. I encourage them to move to the geography they love and let the job sort itself out. That way, if they do not like their job, at least they are living in a place they love.

You Don’t Necessarily Have to Have a “Great Job”

When I was growing up, I was indoctrinated with the idea that I was supposed to get a “great job.” It was not exactly clear what constituted a great job, but being a doctor or lawyer was definitely on the list, along with any high-paying job in business. As a result, I didn’t even consider a lot of possible careers. A life as a bartender at a ski resort was definitely not a “great job.”

I can remember hearing it constantly, “That person has a great job,” as if that somehow made the person a better human being. In the 1960s, a woman might be told to find a husband “with a great job.” I came to believe there was no real choice in life except to get one of these great jobs and avoid all the rest. My life began to revolve around maximizing my chances of getting one. Get good grades in high school, go to a good college, attend business school—and the great job would await.

The phrase “he has a great job” is still used today to refer to that vaguely defined list. Lawyer is on the list, but I have met many lawyers over the years, and they seem to be some of the most unhappy, stressed, and angry people I know. Several have told me that if they could do it all over again, they would choose something else. Why did they feel that way if they had “a great job”?

My view of a great job changed when I moved to Vail, Colorado. I met people who had jobs that did not meet the traditional great-job criteria. One of my men’s league hockey teammates was a bartender and had married another bartender. They both worked very hard during the ski season, from about November 1 through April 30. They made enough money during those busy months to support themselves for the entire year. From May 1 through October 31, they were free to do whatever they wanted. They had decided not to have children, so they could travel the world, play golf, or pursue whatever new opportunities each summer brought.

I contrasted that with my “great job” running a software company. During my last ten years, I had perhaps twenty weeks of vacation. My bartender friend and his wife had 260 weeks with no work and could do whatever they wanted. They had traveled to all sorts of wonderful places I had never seen and experienced adventures I could only dream about in my busy life. Who exactly had the “great job”?

I think this phrase can also be useful to someone whose job is not on the “great job” list. Some people I have met think they have somehow failed in life because they “don’t have a great job.” They may simply be judging their job by the wrong criteria. They might already have the best job of all.

I am not saying everyone should quit a “great job” and become a bartender. I like to think I am writing this book for eighteen-year-old Barry, to help him with the life ahead. He has been brainwashed into choosing from a limited list of great jobs, when the reality is that some of those jobs are terrible, and perhaps the best job for him is not on the list at all. I want to tell him, “It is true that you want a great job. Just don’t pick from the list they gave you. Look at all of them.”