A friend called me awhile ago to talk about motorcycles (a passion of mine). He’s decided he wants to get one after some years without (typical boomer on his birthday) and wanted to know what I thought and which one I’d recommend. He started out thinking he wanted a Ducati but was now wondering about a Yamaha vs. a Kawasaki.
Before you stop reading this because you don’t care . . . it turns out to be a useful exercise in decision quality. Follow and learn!
Frame: What’s the problem you’re trying to solve?
When someone asks me about getting a motorcycle, my first question is always some version of, “What do you plan on doing with it?” If you pay no attention to motorcycles, you’d be forgiven for thinking the only differences were who makes them and the only one that comes to mind readily is a Harley. It turns out that there are bikes for every conceivable purpose: Trials, motocross, enduro, touring, sport touring, commuting, and racing just to pick some categories. There are distinctions like “naked bikes”, “repli-racers,” “cruisers,” “heavy cruisers,” “baggers,” “dual sport” and many more.
When I started riding again, I didn’t know the answer to that question so I bought a bike that purported to do everything pretty well. I sold it a year later at a loss because it didn’t do the thing I really found I liked doing–which was long distance riding–particularly well.
So Lesson One is this: before you go rushing off to the store or wherever it is they sell what you think you want to buy, ask yourself what it is you’re trying to accomplish? And then ask it again in a different way. And keep doing it until you’ve thought about the problem from every angle.
Objectives/Values/Preferences: These are all different versions of the same idea, which is what do you want?
This is different than the problem you’re trying to solve. In the case of my friend, his mental picture was hopping on a bike and running into town for a cup of coffee or going for a morning ride out to the coast and back. 100 miles would be a big day. He wants to have some fun and look good doing it. Given some prodding, he also doesn’t want to spend his life maintaining the thing or worrying that it’s going to break down. He’s not concerned about resale value particularly because in the grand scheme of things, what he’s thinking about spending isn’t bank-breaking for him.
Part of the value of talking to me in this was that I knew to ask him about this because I’ve owned motorcycles and I know him.
Lesson Two is two lessons. The first part is to spend some time thinking about what it is you really want. What makes you happy? If there are other people involved . . . what makes them happy? What do they want? In the case of the motorcycle, it might be good for his wife to weigh in. In a family care decision, what you want, your parent(s) want, and your brother or sister wants can be very, very different, and satisfying all those different preferences can be very, very difficult (lots of trade-offs).
The second part is the value of talking with “someone like me”. There’s nothing like a peer for getting the straight scoop. In the case of the motorcycle, I’m a bit older, he makes a bit more money, I’m a bit taller, he’s a bit lighter, but at the end of the day, our situation and world views are pretty similar and I’m a couple of years ahead of him on this learning curve. So I’m a good resource for him. Find people like that when you face a tough decision.
Choices: What can you do?
Choices are good. You can’t really make a decision unless you have at least two . . . otherwise there’s really nothing to actually decide. There’s no real rule about this. Most people have too few. Or to put it another way, there are generally more choices available than most people are aware of. Why? We tend to fixate on the first or second reasonable alternative that shows up. If you’re a guy, two choices feels like a lot, particularly when “shopping” is concerned.
For other people, the issue is in having or wanting lots of choices . . . too many choices. That incessant search for the “best” alternative can cripple decision processes.
In the case of my friend the soon-to-be motorcycle owner, he had three ideas in mind, two kind of similar, and the third pretty different. He could have looked at more alternatives, but given his objectives and what follows, there isn’t a lot of point in that.
Lesson Three: Give yourself at least three attractive alternatives.
Information and Uncertainty: What do you need to know?
There are a zillion things to know about a motorcycle, and I read no fewer than six motorcycle magazines a month and countless web pages. It’s a hobby or maybe an obsessions. I was like that about cameras for a long time and cars before that. My friend isn’t a geek, he just wants to ride. So what is it he needs to know about the bikes to make a decision? In decision theory, it’s called the party problem (which someday I’ll blog about).
You can make yourself crazy trying to research options . . . whether it’s motorcycles, insurance policies, reverse mortgages, nurse assistants, whatever. The question you should always be asking yourself is, “what do I really want to know so that i can make this decision?” If I push my friend, it’s, “Will I have fun?’ or possibly, “Will I look good riding it?” His wife probably wants to know “Will he be safe?” And if you can get it down to that, doing your research is really pretty easy.
Back to the motorcycles . . . the truth is the two bikes he’s now interested in both check all the boxes given that he’s probably only going to ride this thing a few thousand miles over maybe two years and then sell it.
- Reliable: check, check
- Maintenance costs: low, low
- Performance: high, high
- Cost: affordable, affordable
- Fun to ride: yes, yes
In other words, though it might be amusing to compare the fine differences in both bikes, it’s a waste of time. They both provide more of each of what my friend values that he needs or pay even want. In other words, if both go faster than you’ll ever go, does it matter that one goes 142 and the other goes 139?
Lesson four is look only for the information that will help you understand the meaningful differences between your alternatives.
So in the end, it comes down to something ridiculously easy like, “Which one makes you smile the most?” And in the case of my friend, if he truly hates what he bought, then he sells it, loses a couple of thousand dollars (which he can afford), and now he makes a new decision armed with a much sharper set of preferences.
I offer this not to trivialize how difficult big life decisions can be. Buying a motorcycle hardly arising to the same emotional intensity as figuring out where mom should live now that she can’t take care of herself. But the process still applies, and in the end there is often a singular insight that helps you focus on what’s really important about your particular problem. And when you find that, the rest of the going is much, much easier. That’s what we’re here for.
kah
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