Emotional distance improves problem-solving

The video narration, with headings and paragraph breaks added for easier reading.

A difficult decision

Four children. Two cats. A mortgage twice the size of the old one. And, if they went ahead with the move, neither adult would have a job. This was the situation Tim and Sonja were considering shortly before buying a house in Yateley near London. They had enough savings to cover the new mortgage for three months.

The cats had offered no financial assistance. There was a perfectly sensible alternative. Stay in Portsmouth. Where Tim's wages covered the existing mortgage. So why would they even consider moving? And how do you make a decision like that when every thought arrives with its own small panic attached? Their most useful tool turned out to be a paper flip chart.

We'll come back to what they put on it because the important part of this story is how it helped them think. Have you noticed how much easier somebody else's problems can seem? A friend explains a difficult situation. You listen, ask a couple of questions, and spot an option they haven't considered. Then you return to your own problem, which has been holding committee meetings in your head since Tuesday.

Same questions. Same objections. No minutes taken. Our own problems come attached to things we care about. Security. Family. Pride. Expectations. And the possibility of explaining to someone later why we thought this was a good idea. Those feelings matter. But they can make it difficult to examine the decision itself. Tim and Sonja developed a phrase for this.

A problem is not a problem if you can divorce yourself from the emotion of the problem. The mortgage company, naturally, may still consider it a problem. The practical point is that a difficult situation becomes easier to work through when you can create some distance from the feelings surrounding it. And sometimes you can create that distance.

with a sheet of paper.

The move that suddenly changed

Back in Portsmouth, Tim sold carpets in a department store. He had been doing it for years. He knew he could sell, but he was thoroughly bored with what he was selling. Sonja worked with computers. She had programming and software support experience and had secured a better paid job in Slough. On Monday mornings, she drove away for work.

On Friday evenings, she came home. They decided to move closer. After two or three months of weekend house hunting, they found a house they loved. Their Portsmouth home was a terraced house in a less attractive part of the city. The new house offered more bedrooms, a garden, trees, green space nearby, and the prospect of better schools for the children.

It was the sort of home they had hoped to afford. Then, shortly before they were due to exchange contracts, Sonja lost her job. The job that had prompted the move. Suddenly, their exciting next chapter required a fairly substantial rewrite. If they stayed, Tim could continue working and cover the mortgage. Sonja could look for another job, with her earnings supplementing his.

If they moved, Tim would have to leave his job too. The larger mortgage would require both of them to find adequately paid work. They had three months of mortgage payments in reserve. This was a real choice. Staying was possible. Moving carried a serious financial risk. But losing that particular job had not removed everything that made the move attractive.

Personal computers were beginning to transform the workplace. New software was appearing. Spreadsheets, databases, word processors. Businesses needed people who could understand it, support it, program it, and sell it. Tim and Sonja were fascinated. They attended seminars and conferences, including an annual event called SoftTeach, where they saw the software and opportunities emerging around PCs.

Moving near London would put them much closer to that activity. For Sonja, it offered more opportunities to do work she enjoyed. For Tim, it offered a route from selling carpets into selling technology. He wanted a career with a different kind of mouse. There were substantial reasons to go. There were substantial reasons to stay.

And there was a house they had already fallen in love with, which was unlikely to make their judgment more detached.

Putting the decision on paper

So they got a paper flip chart. They drew a line down the middle. On one side, they listed the reasons to proceed. On the other, the reasons not to. Together, they brainstormed. Better employment opportunities. A more interesting career. A better home for the family. A much larger mortgage. No guaranteed income. Four children depending on them.

They returned to the chart over several evenings during the course of a week. That mattered. A thought could be written down, examined, and left there. They could come back to it without having to reconstruct the entire argument. Inside your head, several concerns can become one enormous, indistinct threat. On paper, they become separate things you can ask questions about.

One of their most important questions was, how confident are you that you can find a job within three months, paying more than you could earn here? Each answered on a scale of one to ten. Sonja: nine. Tim: nine. Those were their judgments, informed by what they knew about the market and their willingness to do the work of finding employment.

They had attended conferences. They had investigated the technology. Sonja already had relevant experience. Tim had sales experience and was determined to make the transition. Neither score was a promise from a future employer, but each gave them a specific assessment to discuss. Instead of repeatedly asking, what if we can't find jobs? They could ask, do we have a reason to change our assessment?

That is a much smaller conversation. They gave each pro and con a score and added up the two sides. For them, the result made going ahead an obvious choice. Tim looked at Sonja. “Holy shit, doubling our mortgage and no jobs. So we’re going for it then?”

“Yes,” she said and grinned.

“People are going to think we’re crazy.”

“Yes,” said Sonja, grinning even more. The numbers expressed their priorities and judgments. They did not turn the future into a certainty, but the exercise reduced their fear and brought them to a shared decision. They no longer needed to argue each detail from the beginning every evening. The worry had been heard. It had been considered.

It did not need another 45 minute presentation. This is an important distinction. A concern returning to your mind does not necessarily mean you have discovered something new. Sometimes it means you have remembered the same concern. When your reasoning exists only in your head, it is easy to confuse the two. Writing it down gives you a reference point.

Here is the concern. Here is what we know. Here is our assessment. Has anything changed? If it has, revise the assessment. If it hasn't, you can put your attention into the next useful action.

Turning the decision into action

For Tim and Sonja, the next useful action was finding work. They went ahead with the move. Then they treated getting a job as a job in its own right. Nine until six, sometimes longer. Applications, agencies, interviews, preparation. Sonja had relevant programming and software support experience. Tim faced a more difficult transition from department store carpet sales into PC-related sales.

He attended interview after interview, learning what employers were looking for, and becoming better at presenting himself. His account also includes exaggerating his experience, a controversial part of his career story explored separately on the site. What matters to this decision is that their confidence was followed by concentrated effort. They worked at creating the outcome they had judged achievable.

Both found jobs within one month. They had allowed themselves three. The cats contributed dead rodents and kittens. All good entertainment, although not directly helpful. A good outcome does not prove that every similar risk is worth taking. Another couple, with different experience, obligations, or opportunities, could use the same process and sensibly decide to stay.

The useful lesson is the process. You do not need an international crisis or a house purchase to try it. Start with the decision you keep circling. Write down the actual choice. List the reasons for and against each option, including the ones you would prefer not to acknowledge. Then, examine what you have written.

Which issues are factual, which are emotional, and which contain a bit of both? What do you actually know? What are you assuming? Which assumptions are credible because you have experience or evidence behind them, which are being driven by fear, attachment, or enthusiasm for the answer you would like?

Facts, feelings and assumptions

“We have enough savings for three months of mortgage payments” describes the financial limit. “We are confident we can find work” is a judgment to examine. In Tim and Sonja's case, they could explain what supported it. Their knowledge of the market, their experience, and the effort they were prepared to make. “We might fail” identifies a possibility.

The next questions are how likely you think it is, why you think that, and what the consequences would be. Writing these things down helps you see the differences. Otherwise, a fact, a fear, and a hopeful guess can all turn up in your head, wearing the same very convincing suit. If scores help, decide what they mean and use them consistently.

How important is this consideration? How confident are you in this assumption? A number makes your judgment easier to examine. It still needs an honest reason behind it. Give serious consequences the attention they deserve. A long list of small advantages should not quietly cancel out a risk you cannot afford. If someone else shares the decision, make sure both perspectives appear on the page.

Then look at the whole picture. Sometimes the next step will be a decision. Sometimes it will be finding a missing piece of information. Either way, you have something more useful than a crowded head. Tim and Sonja's flip chart helped them organize their thoughts, distinguish practical concerns from emotional reactions, and examine the assumptions behind their fears.

That made the decision more objective. It also helped them agree. Once a concern had been examined and scored, they could return to the assessment and ask whether anything justified changing it. They did not have to reopen the entire debate every time the same worry returned. The chart did not get them jobs. It helped them finish deciding, so they could put their energy into getting them.

Think about the problem you have been carrying around. How much of your thinking is helping you understand it, and how much is the same concern coming back for another lap? Give it somewhere to land. A sheet of paper, a line down the middle, facts you can check, feelings you can acknowledge, assumptions you can question.

You may discover that the problem is still difficult but considerably smaller than the committee in your head had reported.