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From the article: > As I throw that coin into the air, I often find myself hoping it comes down on one side. That moment reveals what I actually want to do. I
by vog 14y ago
From the article:
> As I throw that coin into the air, I often find myself hoping it comes down on one side. That moment reveals what I actually want to do. I ignore the coin result and do what I wanted anyway. The one-second window often reveals what a few hours or days of mulling has failed to uncover.
That's a great advice!
It reminds me on a great radio talk show at Berlin's youth radio "Fritz". It was about hard decisions. The caller stated his or her problem, and talked about it with the moderator. Then, the moderator threw an imaginary dice (some kind of random number generator, plaing the sound of a falling die), and confronted the caller with that "oracle decision". The direct reactions were always revealing: It was either "Great, I'll do that!" or "No! That's bullshit!" ... so either way, that random "oracle decision" helped them to maked the real decision.
- wac 14y agoThere was an episode of _Frasier_ where they did this. I think it was near the end of season 6.
- devolve 14y agoThe use of this method is also described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin_flipping#Use_in_clarifying_feelings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin_flipping#Use_in_clarifying...
- bazzargh 14y agoI'm not sure about this attribution to Freud. The wiki reference is to a management self-help book. That kind of book is full of inspirational quotes, never cites sources, and really shouldn't be relied on. Digging back it seems likely that the story has been mangled somewhere from this apposite quote, also popular in the same kind of book: When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature.-- Freud. This one's real though, it's related by Theodore Reik in "The Inner Experience of a Psychoanalyst", 1949. In context, Reik studied under Freud (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Reik http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Reik). They met and Reik asked for help in choosing a career, the quote was Freud's reply. There's not a mention of a coin in the anecdote.