What makes a “good” decision?

I believe it’s one that leads to a behaviour which has a high likelihood of improving your quality of life in both the short and longer term, causing as little harm as possible to live in accordance with your core values while furthering your progress on your goals.

Unfortunately, most people make decisions shortsightedly, doing whatever occurs to them without much consideration of their values, goals, or quality of life in the years to come. In this post, I hope to help remedy that with a new model I’ve developed with the support of my coaching clients: Needs vs Wants vs Shoulds.

I’ts based on the idea that there are 3 categories for every potential action you can take.

NEED: your survival depends on this, or it is so incredibly important that you could not live with yourself if you did not do it.

WANT: your preferred behaviour. This doesn’t mean you “feel like” doing it, moreso that it’s meaningful, you would be proud of yourself for doing it, it aligns with your core values, it helps you achieve healthy goals that matter to you, and in the future you will be grateful you did it.

SHOULD: tasks you feel obliged, pressured or guilty about, even though you neither need to do them or want to do them. These are the actions that society, parents and media have programmed into you as things you should do – to be “successful”, to be a “good person”, and so on. This category also includes the problem of instant-gratification – your mind’s impulsive instructions to do pleasurable activities that come with long-term suffering as a payback.

Your self-confidence dies whenever you do a SHOULD task. Or more accurately: whenever you do something from a SHOULD motivation. Therefore, your confidence and life quality should improve when you spend most of your time in Needs and Wants.

NEEDS

You know an action is a need if you can prove it’s required for your immediate survival and safety. While this will be subjective for each person, it’s important that you make this criteria as strict as possible.

Eating some food is a need, but eating whatever you want all the time is not. Drinking water is a need, but drinking Coke is not. Maybe maintaining your relationship is vital to you, but spending all your time together is not.

You might think your entire list of job-related tasks are “needed”, but that’s definitely not true. Some or even most of the tasks on that list aren’t even needed to keep your job; you wouldn’t get fired for not doing them. And even if that’s true, this is probably not the only job you could ever get.

So you must take care when saying things like, “I need to send this email by tomorrow”. No, you feel like you should send the email by tomorrow, but if you don’t no major measurable survival harm occurs.

If you’re being honest and accurate, very few of your daily tasks will qualify as NEEDS. As a rule of thumb, I’d suggest a couple of hours per day, max.

Some examples of needed tasks:

• eating healthy food once per day
• drinking water
• exercising
• sleeping
• taking care of your children when they’re sick
• paying your taxes before major penalties are imposed
• obeying the law
• going to the dentist when you have a bad toothache

These tasks are top priority. Everything else should have to wait in a queue for these to be done first.

Sadly, many people procrastinate or otherwise fail to complete these tasks. They eat bad food. They don’t allow enough time for sleeping. They delay going to the doctor to get that nasty mole checked out.

And tragically, such failures are often because they’ve convinced themselves that some other tasks are more “needed” when it’s not true, like skipping exercise because you think you need to help your friend move house.

WANTS

This is perhaps the most complex category. It’s so easy for us to convince ourselves that we “want” to do something when we don’t even know what it means to want. Getting this sorted is imperative to making healthy decisions.

You might think you want to get drunk, that you desire drinking alcohol. But if you think about the ongoing repercussions of this – from the hangover to low-level brain damage to long-term reduction of quality of life – do you really want this and everything that comes with it? Odds are, you’d prefer to be someone who can enjoy life without requiring the crutch of alcohol to regulate your emotions and reduce your social anxiety.

You might even tell yourself you “need a drink”, which of course is ridiculous. Every human on the planet can survive without alcohol indefinitely. But you somehow went from telling yourself you wanted to a drink (which you didn’t even investigate the meaning of) to now believing it’s necessary. People do this kind of thinking ALL THE TIME.

To want something is to agree that the action and the ongoing repercussions of that action are your preferred choice. It means you want to be the person who does things like this.

Oddly enough, this often means you won’t “feel like” doing it. This is what makes this category confusing for people. They think wanting something means a pleasurable anticipation of the outcomes; believing it will be instantly rewarding emotionally and physically, like the hedonistic pleasures of eating ice cream, putting off a difficult task for later, smoking weed, and masturbating to porn.

But do you want to be someone who eats too much ice cream? Someone who always procrastinates and gets into trouble for lacking discipline? Someone addicted to weed and unable to manage stress without relying on substances? A fully grown adult who jerks it to porn?

No. Probably not.

If you don’t want the repercussions of the action, then you don’t really want to do it. You just have an autopilot addiction to instant gratification that has you mindlessly reaching for a quick fix. This is probably not the person you want to be in the long term.

Notice how instant gratification isn’t actually that enjoyable. As an idea it promises so much and yet delivers so little. KFC always smells better than it tastes, and the feeling you get 10mins after you’ve finished eating it is undeniably unpleasurable. Sure, the first few times you get stoned are amazing, but once you start smoking weed everyday it just feels tiring and depressing (I know from experience).

The same logic to doing something to make someone else like you, or to look good in other people’s eyes. You think you want this outcome, but what is the true cost? If you knew, I doubt you’d be willing to pay. Loss of self, loneliness from absence of deep connections, no self-confidence, unsatisfying career, and being prone to manipulation and abuse are hardly desirable outcomes, yet find me a people-pleaser who doesn’t suffer these pains!

If the action is not something that has a long-term positive impact on your quality of life, then you don’t really want it. You just feel a compulsion, which is not the same thing.

So what does it mean to truly want to do something?

It means this action represents your best self; the person you would be proud to be. It’s something that will increase your quality of life, giving meaning and joy to the act of living over a long time period. It’s something that makes you healthier; a better person by your own standards. Something you’d hope your children model from you. Something you wish other people would do more of.

That means it might actually be uncomfortable to do! At least, at first. Working out is not physically comfortable. Telling your partner the truth might lead to a brief conflict. Getting that tricky work project finished might feel frustrating.

But the way you feel about yourself after it’s done is where the reward is received. It’s feeling good about yourself that you truly want, and therefore you must undertake whichever actions are most likely to make you feel this way.

And not all WANT tasks are unpleasant. Many are actually fine or even immediately enjoyable once you get started. But often, getting started requires some kind of hassle or effort or mental discontent.

Playing guitar is fun but getting the gear ready is annoying. Fishing is fun but preparing the rods and cleaning up the fish-guts might not be. Standing up to your partner might be incredibly uncomfortable but having a close honest relationship is massively rewarding.

So when considering an action, instead of asking “Do I feel like doing this right now?”, try asking something more like, “Do I want to be the person who does this kind of behaviour?” or, “How will I feel about myself tomorrow if I do this now?”

Some examples of Wants:

• Going to the gym every day regardless of how motivated you feel
• Standing up for yourself and your loved ones
• Structuring your day into thoughtful routines and patterns that ensure efficiency
• Doing the emotionally difficult tasks at work that also have the highest return on investment
• Quitting something that you know is bad for you
• Moderating indulgence in things like sugar, video games, alcohol and masturbation, carefully dishing it out based on a healthy balance of healthy vs unhealthy pleasures
• Spending quality time with your children
• Going to bed at a reasonable time

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SHOULD

If it’s not a Need or a Want, it’s a Should.

A Should is an action that you feel compelled to do from some vague subconscious motive, but when investigated it’s clear this action is neither healthy nor necessary, and certainly not what a highly confident person would do.

Often, this Should motivation comes from the people-pleasing mentality; you’re only doing it to get approval from others or to prevent rejection from the group you wish to belong to. If no one was watching or no one cared whether you did it, then you wouldn’t do it.

Sometimes the Should is more like pressure from yourself that’s born of some unhealthy motivation. The urge for instant gratification will be common here, like the compulsion to binge-watch shows or jerk it to porn. Or insecure beliefs driving egotistical behaviour, like being a perfectionist about unimportant tasks, being way too careful due to the fear of getting things wrong, or overdoing everything just because your dad once called you lazy.

Shoulds essentially derive from two types of identity attachment: how you want people to see you, and how you think you should be due to childhood programming and conditioning. These are different from your authentic self, which is the person you’d be if you only did Needs and Wants.

A confident person rarely does a Should. Ideally, never.

There are two options for dealing with a Should. Either you change it into a Need or a Want and then do it, or you cancel it.

What people automatically do is categorize Shoulds as Needs or Wants in a thoughtless fashion. As soon as the urge arises – a suggestion is made by the mind – we respond with “Yeah that’s a great idea” (Want) or “Yeah it would be awful if I didn’t do that” (Need). We do this without careful analysis to skeptically investigate the urge, to see if it’s legitimate.

If you don’t need to do it to survive (or prevent serious measurable harm), and the action doesn’t clearly align with your values and your authentic goals for your ideal self, then it is a “Should”, and needs to be discarded (or at least de-prioritized if you’re not yet courageous enough to just say No).

Some examples of Shoulds:

• Cleaning the house just because your parents are visiting and you worry they’ll judge you
• Starting a new project idea spontaneously just because it feels exciting, a.k.a. Shiny Object Syndrome
• Finishing a boring book you were reading just because you feel uncomfortable quitting things once you’ve started
• Wearing fashionable clothes you wouldn’t usually wear when going to spend time with “high status” people
• Compulsively tidying up without a clear idea as to why
• Bingeing on a show without having first clearly defined what the healthy amount of watching would be today
• Being flat out busy as a constant pattern
• Any form of people-pleasing (behaviour with the primary intention of gaining approval from someone else)
• Buying something just because you feel pressured and would feel awkward telling the salesman No
• Staying up late and ruining your energy for the following day just because you feel you were too busy to get “me time” today

Sometimes, an action starts in the Should category, but you can see merit in doing it too. For example, I might feel an irrational urge to clean the kitchen even though it’s not particularly dirty and there are more important things in the queue, but at some point it is important to clean the kitchen.

In situations like this, it doesn’t mean you must immediately clean the kitchen. You can change the category to Want and then place it in it’s rightful position in the queue (i.e. do it later). Leave it long enough, and it becomes a Need (you’re now at risk of health issues). Sometimes it’s ok to wait this long.

Making the Call

By simply asking, “Will someone die or get seriously harmed if I don’t do this?” (Need), and if that’s a No, asking, “Would doing this align with being the kind of person I aspire to be?” (Want), we can quickly sort ideas into their correct categories, or reassess our to-do lists on a regular basis.

Sometimes you need to change the format of the question. When I do my quarterly review of my work to do list, I ask things like, “Which of these tasks can be proven to grow my business?” and “If I had to stop doing this task I no longer enjoy, what would the impact actually be?”

Needs can change over time. If you have a new chronic health issue, then managing it will have a number of new Need-type tasks. And if there were things you were doing for a Need that no longer exists, then it can be de-prioritised or removed (e.g. changing your lifestyle when you move to another city).

It’s all about developing the habit of resisting internal and external pressures to undertake tasks with a screening process that carefully checks whether this task is worthwhile. In other words, making sure you never do any Shoulds.

The Needs come first, or are at least scheduled into your calendar with ruthless discipline, edging out any and all competition. The Wants fit in around the Needs, and compete with each other for priority. Simple.

While many tasks will compete with each other for time, preference and resources, if you eliminate the Shoulds you’ll probably find yourself abundant in spare time. Just take a moment to think about how many Shoulds you currently do – all those things that you only do because you feel pressure and guilt and impulsive urges. Every doom-scroll. Every unnecessary snack. Every extra bit of effort at work that doesn’t contribute to the main purpose of your role.

I installed an app on my phone to help manage my compulsive use of it. I was shocked to see how many hours I lost per day on that thing. There’s no way I need to look at my phone to survive, and there’s very few tasks on their that contribute to my business or relationships, so it was hours of doing Shoulds!

Even if you’ve got kids, there’s what you must do to keep them alive, what you want to do (to be an effective parent and have a good relationship with them), and then there’s all the rest. You don’t want to clean up after them. You don’t have to make them do a different sport or hobby every day. It’s not necessary or preferred to answer every question they ask. If you meet their basic survival needs and spend an average of 20-30mins per day having unrestricted quality time with them, you’re pretty much sorted!

And if you’ve sorted out all the others Shoulds, you will probably have no trouble making that time.

My younger brother once pointed this out to me. He said something like, “I’m learning to speak Russian, running 2 businesses, travelling the world, writing a novel, and creating a tabletop game… and I’m still lazy enough to binge on Netflix and procrastinate on heaps of stuff. What the hell is everyone else doing with their time?”

Good question.

We all have roughly the same number of hours per day available to do things. Why are some people so much more productive than others?

Try be ruthlessly honest with yourself. Pick an average day during your week and track everything you do. Every action. Every behaviour. Every task. And, where possible, record how much time you spent doing it.

You’d be amazed how much time you waste on your phone, or binge on meaningless pleasures. For many of you it will be hours per day. You complain that you don’t have time (or energy) to exercise or play with your kids or make love to your wife… you sure about that?

Do you always answer the phone just because it’s ringing? Do you always respond to an email just because someone sent it to you? Do you do everything your boss asks just because they’re your boss? Do you spend hours per week in front of the mirror trying to look pretty? These are all Shoulds!

The confident person ignores all phone calls unless it’s definitely important. They delete most emails based on the subject line alone. They identify the 20% of work tasks that actually matter and do what they can to get out of doing the other 80%. They dress and style themselves for comfort and convenience and personal pleasure, regardless of whatever judgments they’ll receive.

They take care of their health and the health of their loved ones. They get the ugly important tasks done and dusted by 10am. They check in with their core values and their long term goals before taking on any new tasks, and most of the time their answer to a request or suggestion is No.

Another way to look at it is to imagine the person you want to be. I don’t mean some materialistic or superficial nonsense, but the integral and confident person you’d be proud to wake up as. Then, with that person in mind, look at what you are doing or are considering doing, and ask yourself, “Would this take me towards that image, or away from it?”

If the task doesn’t powerfully serve the vision you have for yourself, and it isn’t necessary for your survival, then it probably shouldn’t be done at all.

Yes, there will be fallout sometimes. You will upset some people. Little things will go “wrong”. But that’s the price of a great life. You focus on what matters and allow everything else to disintegrate.

Progress, Not Perfection

Obviously, the idea of a person who only does Needs and Wants is somewhat mythical. Even as I write this I can identify something I’ve done within the last few hours that is clearly in the Should category (in case you’re wondering, I scrolled on TikTok and ate some chocolate).

But the theory is strong. I’ve empirically tested on myself the difference between doing lots of Shoulds vs. only doing Needs and Wants. I’ve seen it as clearly in others.

For all the people I’ve ever observed who claim to be “busy”, every single one of them is spending nearly half their time doing Shoulds. They are only busy because they compulsively follow every urge, every to-do list item, every command and suggestion from others, as if they lack the power to resist. There’s always a lot of room for improvement, they’re nowhere near their potential.

If you can convert even 30mins per day from Should to Want, such as swapping out a single episode of your show to spend time doing a course to improve your skills, that would be 90+ hours per year – more than 2 full working weeks’ worth of time. You could MASTER something in that time.

It starts with just saying No to things you’d usually say Yes to. Start small, with safe task-cutting that is immediately obvious to you. Don’t read your spam emails, just delete them in bulk. Don’t respond to the group messages every time, just check in once per week. Do all the dishes at the end of the day instead of getting the whole kitchen cleaned up after every meal.

Then look for high leverage tasks that could free up massive amounts of time. Is there an entire project at work that you could safely step away from? Could you hire a travel agent to book your family vacation instead of spending dozens of hours searching for deals? Could you switch to HIIT workouts to reduce your time at the gym from 2 hours per day to 2 hours per week?

But humans have an issue that must be addressed – they eat whatever is on their plate. Freeing up time won’t work on it’s own, because your brain will freak out about that open space and just fill it up with shit. You’ll end up swapping one Should for another. You’ve done it before, right?

So instead of “free time”, swap Shoulds for Wants (or Needs if they’re lacking). You can either add new Wants or double-down on current staples. Swap gossiping with the workmate you don’t even like for boldly introducing yourself to new colleagues you haven’t spoken to before. Swap bingeing on junk food for learning to cook tasty yet healthy snacks. Read a book instead of scrolling on Facebook.

Perfection isn’t required. You’d be amazed at how many “slips” you can get away with and still have a high quality life with strong self confidence. But allowing yourself to be imperfect cannot become a gateway excuse for falling back into destructive time-wasting patterns.

Be stricter than you’re comfortable with but not so strict you feel like rebelling against yourself all the time. One trick is to allow yourself to do anything but on the condition that you must first earn it.

You want to smoke weed on the weekend? Fine… so long as you have done at least 3 workouts this week, gotten your tax return filed, eaten healthy for 80% of your meals, and confronted your boss about their disrespect. If you meet the requirements, smoke away guilt free! But only one smoke, and then back into healthy living for another week.

And look to at least reduce the damage. 10mins of Facebook scrolling is better than 60mins. Stop after 2 cookies instead of smashing the whole package. Make amends with your kids if you shouted at them rather than just letting it go unspoken about.

Journal about your efforts to make better decisions every day. Be truthful with yourself about the times where you unwittingly or deliberately talked yourself into doing a Should, and commend yourself when you did the Needs and Wants, especially if you didn’t feel like doing them. Encouragement comes more from commending what you did right rather than punishing what you did wrong, so be sure to acknowledge all the wins, even the easy ones like taking a shower or paying your bills on time.

And if you’re ever unsure – i.e. your mind argues strongly for a task that you are concerned is just a Should – then test it out. Arrange an experiment that compares doing the Should with exchanging it for a Want. Make it a fair scientific test. The results will be obvious in most cases. If something makes your life worse, then trust the data. Your mind can lie to you, but results can’t.

Eventually you can build up to what feels like big risk taking. Some of my most memorable ones include: cutting my day-job down to about 25hrs per week (from 40) by ignoring nearly all phone calls and emails, so I could build my business on the side; dismissing a threat from a company to send debt collectors instead of submitting to their manipulation; dropping 50% of my work tasks to optimise my business based on client feedback and data; switching to having 20mins of unlimited play time with my daughter rather than hovering over her every spare minute.

I still watch shows. I still eat some junk food. I still get lost on social media sometimes. But by focusing on this process I get it mostly right, and that’s more than enough for a high quality life.

In fact, it might be as efficient as I can get, because when I’m too strict I usually completely relapse because the stress and indignation of being “deprived” convinces me to give up. Like a dam, I need a “spillway” where a little bit is allowed to leak out so the pressure isn’t too much… but I can’t let too much leak out or the damn collapses.

As the Stoics would say, Moderation is a virtue.

How you can make massive progress in just a few months!

You can do all this on your own.

Through trial and error, books, courses and online content, you can figure it out slowly piece by piece over time if you dedicate yourself to it and are willing to fail often and get uncomfortable in order to achieve social mastery and build strong self confidence.

Or…

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Thanks for reading

Hope to speak to you soon

Dan Munro