Okay, I don't know if "Flashback Friday" is a "thing", but I just made it up to serve my purpose. And that purpose here today, my friends, is to take a little trip back in time, to a post far, far away. Well, actually to a blog post I originally wrote back in 2009, on my first blog, when I was a babe in blogland. Hey, I recycle lots of things- why don't we throw blog posts into the mix? Reading through this post, I saw some things that I might have written differently today, or maybe just tweaked a little, but in the interest of being true to the original intent, I'm reposting it here, unedited. Happy Friday!
The Underrated P.O.E.
Like most living, breathing human beings I've always liked the thought of having my cake and eating it too. But since in the real world, that is often just not possible, the need to make choices exists. I could go on and on all day about how much the choices we all must make everyday, large to small, impact our lives and, more often than not, the lives of those around us. And most of us take for granted the number of choices we consciously and subconsciously make every single day. If I mull over the decisions I made just yesterday, I bust myself being on autopilot through a number of them. And I know I'm not alone. But the pace of society today frequently demands that we make many quick decisions, give up the luxury of lengthy consideration, and multitask decision making, often just clicking the "yes to all" button to make things easier on ourselves. I must admit that this form of adaptation to information overload has forced me, having once been constantly guilty of indecisiveness, to reform and learn to choose and move on. So, in a way, it's a good thing. To give up the combined self-indulgence and paranoia of lingering and pondering way longer than the matter was worth and become a reborn master of what I call the P.O.E. I'm not at all the creator, nor have I googled it to see if the acronym already exists. In fact, I'm positive someone else, somewhere has used it because it stands for the widely known 'process of elimination'.
I started thinking about this undervalued, extremely simplistic technique a few weeks ago, considering how it has helped my chronically decision impaired self evolve to cope with the pace of things in this day and age. I remember first learning the concept of P.O.E. back in grade school. Our teacher, Mr. Arthur, first explained process of elimination as it related to multiple choice tests, specifically the hated "scan-tron" tests, on which we were required to fill in bubbles on an answer sheet that corresponded to the questions on the test. My classmates and I were already very familiar with multiple choice questions, but Mr. Arthur's explanation on eliminating the least likely choices first changed the way we (or at least I) looked at making decisions. For people who tend to obsess over choices (like myself sometimes) there was a new level of comfort in the process, knowing that one would start by removing the options that were definite "no's" or highly unlikely first, leaving only the best, most likely options. Anyway, as basic as this thing is, and even though it doesn't guarantee the right or best choice, I truly feel it's something that has helped me for many years now to get things done. I think I use it now more than ever, considering our choices in life seem to have quadrupled. I am constantly saying that my time is my most valuable commodity. And since I don't want that much of my life being spent deciding what color my cell phone should be, what flavor smoothie I want, or what shade of lipgloss to buy, I put P.O.E. to work and get on with my day. Decision making is definitely a necessary skill, and I'm getting better all the time. Thank you, Mr. Arthur.
The Underrated P.O.E.
Like most living, breathing human beings I've always liked the thought of having my cake and eating it too. But since in the real world, that is often just not possible, the need to make choices exists. I could go on and on all day about how much the choices we all must make everyday, large to small, impact our lives and, more often than not, the lives of those around us. And most of us take for granted the number of choices we consciously and subconsciously make every single day. If I mull over the decisions I made just yesterday, I bust myself being on autopilot through a number of them. And I know I'm not alone. But the pace of society today frequently demands that we make many quick decisions, give up the luxury of lengthy consideration, and multitask decision making, often just clicking the "yes to all" button to make things easier on ourselves. I must admit that this form of adaptation to information overload has forced me, having once been constantly guilty of indecisiveness, to reform and learn to choose and move on. So, in a way, it's a good thing. To give up the combined self-indulgence and paranoia of lingering and pondering way longer than the matter was worth and become a reborn master of what I call the P.O.E. I'm not at all the creator, nor have I googled it to see if the acronym already exists. In fact, I'm positive someone else, somewhere has used it because it stands for the widely known 'process of elimination'.
I started thinking about this undervalued, extremely simplistic technique a few weeks ago, considering how it has helped my chronically decision impaired self evolve to cope with the pace of things in this day and age. I remember first learning the concept of P.O.E. back in grade school. Our teacher, Mr. Arthur, first explained process of elimination as it related to multiple choice tests, specifically the hated "scan-tron" tests, on which we were required to fill in bubbles on an answer sheet that corresponded to the questions on the test. My classmates and I were already very familiar with multiple choice questions, but Mr. Arthur's explanation on eliminating the least likely choices first changed the way we (or at least I) looked at making decisions. For people who tend to obsess over choices (like myself sometimes) there was a new level of comfort in the process, knowing that one would start by removing the options that were definite "no's" or highly unlikely first, leaving only the best, most likely options. Anyway, as basic as this thing is, and even though it doesn't guarantee the right or best choice, I truly feel it's something that has helped me for many years now to get things done. I think I use it now more than ever, considering our choices in life seem to have quadrupled. I am constantly saying that my time is my most valuable commodity. And since I don't want that much of my life being spent deciding what color my cell phone should be, what flavor smoothie I want, or what shade of lipgloss to buy, I put P.O.E. to work and get on with my day. Decision making is definitely a necessary skill, and I'm getting better all the time. Thank you, Mr. Arthur.
