Hair grows back
Rupa-di is Priya’s cousin. She is eighteen, and she decides fast.
At the salon she showed a photo on her phone. Five minutes later her long hair was short.
On the way home she found a tattoo she liked, a small bird for her wrist. “Saturday,” she said. That took five minutes too.
Priya reads slowly, and she thinks slowly. She noticed that both choices got the same five minutes. Should they have?
The idea
A haircut grows back. If Rupa-di hates it, she waits a few months. A tattoo stays for life. They are different kinds of choice, so they should not get the same thinking.
People who make big decisions for a living put it like this.
The idea
One-way doors and two-way doors get different deliberation budgets.
Think of each choice as a door you walk through.
A two-way door opens both ways. If you do not like what is on the other side, you walk back. A haircut is a two-way door. So is what you wear tomorrow.
A one-way door shuts behind you. A tattoo is one. So is a word said out loud. Once somebody has heard it, you cannot take it back.
Deliberation is thinking a choice over before you make it. A deliberation budget is how much of that thinking a choice gets.
A two-way door needs a small budget. Choose, try it, and walk back if it is wrong. A one-way door needs a big one, because there is no walking back.
Too little thinking for a one-way door, and you may live with a mistake. Too much for a two-way door, and you lose time you could have spent trying.
The hard part is telling the doors apart. Size does not tell you.
Before Durga Puja the whole flat was cleaned. Papa and Priya spent an hour on where the big almirah should go. But an almirah can be moved back. It looked like the big choice, and it was the easy one.
Then Bablu carried out a small tin box for the man who buys old papers. It held letters from Dida’s mother. Once sold, they would be gone. Priya stopped him and asked Dida first.
What people say instead
That week Priya could not choose between two library books. She took the question to Dida.
Dida smiled and touched her cheek. “Sleep on it, shona. Every choice deserves a night.”
It is kind advice, and most people give it: one speed for every choice.
But a library book can go back on Monday. Five minutes was enough. And a tattoo needs much more than one night.
Two more
One day Priya’s friend Mou laughed at her answer in class, in front of everyone. At ten o’clock that night Priya typed an angry message. Her thumb was over send.
Sending is a one-way door. Once Mou reads it, it cannot be unread.
So Priya did what Dida says. She slept on it. In the morning the message looked different, and she deleted it. For this door, a night was the right size.
For her birthday Priya was given money of her own. She wanted a guitar.
The shop takes nothing back. Buying was a one-way door, so Priya gave it a week. She tried guitars and asked her music teacher.
The music school near her house rents guitars by the month. Renting was a two-way door. She said yes in five minutes, and began to learn. A month of playing would tell her more than a week of wondering.
Spot it
Two choices. For each one, ask Priya’s question first.
1
This term Priya must join one club, chess or drawing. The school lets you change clubs next term. Which door is it? How long should it get?
2
Kaku says the old mango tree in the courtyard could come down, to make room for his scooter. The tree is older than Papa. Which door is it? How long should it get?
Two doors, two budgets
A haircut, a book, a message, a guitar. Each one needed the same question first: which door is it?
The club is a two-way door. Priya can change it next term, so five minutes is enough. She chose drawing.
The mango tree is a one-way door. A new one would take a lifetime to grow that tall. So the family talked for a month, and everyone had a say. The tree is still there.
This week, at home
Name three choices your family made this month. Which could be undone? Which got the most thinking?
Dida told Priya about Sushruta, a healer long ago. His students practised on gourds and melons before they operated on the sick. Practice was a two-way door. The patient was not. That night Priya sorted her week’s choices into two lists: doors that shut, and doors that don’t.
The name
People who study choices call this reversibility.
To reverse is to go back. -ibility means whether it can be done. So reversibility asks: can this be undone?
Ask it first. Its answer tells you how long to take.
Rupa-di is giving the tattoo a month. For now she has a mehndi butterfly. It will fade in two weeks, so she picked it in five minutes.
Where you will see this next
Next chapter: why the later you never seems to have more time.