How to make hard choices

In her 2014 talk (14min), seen by over 8 million people worldwide, Ruth Chang talks about why it is hard to make tough decisions. Sometimes the tough decisions you face have an enormous impact on your life, and sometimes they barely impact the outcome of your day. Tough choices can be as simple as whether to have cereal or a donut for breakfast or whether or not to dive into a career as an artist or a banker. With COVID-19 cases rising, do I go into the office or try to stay home? The choices are tough, not because we are stupid, but because no alternative is exclusively better than the other. There are some things about each of the alternates that have benefits.

Frequently, tough choices involve questions about values. What is exciting about these tough choices is that they define who we are; so it's not about making the correct choice but making the choice that reflects who you want to be. Hard choices allow us to become the authors of our lives…