Should you make a pros and cons list?

Let’s list the pros and cons!

Now, I love a list of any kind. Pros and cons lists included! But I’ve found that most people aren’t really using them correctly. We tend to put everything on there, from small to large. So your Pros column for, say, getting a dog, might include:

• I love dogs

• It would keep me company

• Walking a dog is a great way to meet potential dates

And your Cons list might include

• I’m allergic to dogs

• I already have five cats

• My husband is also allergic to dogs

I’m exaggerating for effect, but you can see how the items on the Cons list are way bigger and more relevant to your current life than the Pros list.

We do this for everything! This is especially true when we have been making a decision for a long period of time. We keep adding things to the list, and that list starts to include things that don’t really matter.

For example, if you’re trying to decide to move from Portland to Seattle for a job, “50% increase in salary” belongs on the list of Pros. Good! This is correct.

But as time goes by and you keep thinking about it, you might start adding other things to that list. Now, that big salary bump is sitting right next to “two fewer days of rain per year” on the list, or “better sandwiches,” or “comes later in the alphabet”—things that started occurring to you as more time passed. This is bad.

Those things don’t matter the same amount, but they look, on a pros and cons list, like they should! And the list gets longer and longer and longer…..

A lot of people suggest “weighting” your list, assigning numbers to each item that correspond to how important that item is. I think that’s unnecessarily complicated.

Instead, let’s pare that list back. Pick the three (I’ll concede five for Very Big Decisions but I highly recommend keeping it to three) most important Pros in your decision and the three most important Cons. Now list those next to each other. You’ll be able to see much more clearly what matters, and what doesn’t. All of a sudden, it’s much easier to decide.

Here’s one way a Pros and Cons list can confuse things rather than make them clearer. Rachel, a client in her early 40s, called me about a relationship she was unsure of. She’d been trying to decide whether or not to break up with her boyfriend for a while. “I made,” she told me, “a pros and cons list, but it came out balanced.”

Hold on, I said. Is that what a relationship pros and cons list should look like???

If you’re deciding on a relationship and the cons list is as heavily weighted as the pros list, let me save you some time and say—just break up now.