Decision making via flipping-coins.

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How many feel it's periodically necessary to flip coins as one of many means of decision making - that is decisions only involving the more minor aspects of life?

Flipping coins may not be the most readily available options.

It's not just 'heads or tails' shaping decisions, but 'odd or even' numbers. The minute reading on digital clocks (or the minute-hand on clocks), or the odometer reading on vehicles that changes every 1/10th of a mile traveled often proves to be most handy.

Again, best to allow chance to shape the more minor decisions in life. For major-decisions, it's best to consult qualified professionals.

There is enough input available from my own desires, plans, feelings, goals, wants, that even those seemingly minor decisions can be made without involving external randomness.

I have used this method most of my life. If I have a tough decision to make, I'll list all the pros and cons in two columns, to see if this helps to clarify things. Then I might do some fact checking or extra research to make sure I have all the information I can get before the choice must be made. If there is still no clear preference, that is the time to flip a coin. However, you don't use the coin to make the decision; you use it to get a quick sense of concern or relief when you see what it recommends, and base the final decision on that feeling.
One time, I went into a situation that didn't feel right, because I couldn't see why. If I'd been content to walk away and try another route, I might not have gotten totally sidetracked, but I was curious.

Using chance to decide on the more mundane, minor tasks in life makes sense - that is schedules are not too rigid, yet not too flexible either.

As a kid I would often flip coins just for fun. I always thought the "tails" side of Canadian coins made more sense since most of them have animals on them.

I prefer "Flipping the bird".

I'd be loathe to allow randomness into my decision making, though sometimes when it's a hard decision I get the feeling that I may as well just toss a coin. But I suppose I could just pick one of the alternatives without going to the trouble of finding a coin. Still, usually I just carry on pondering the matter until some thought or other nudges me into favouring one of the options or unfavouring one of them. I do get rather sick of collecting all the relevent data and sifting through it though, and I worry about the time it takes, so sometimes if the decision isn't extremely important I've just jumped to a choice, though it's often hard for me to do that, and I often get stuck in the compulsive habit of being insanely analytical, which bothers me a lot.

I can see coin-tossing being useful in some circumstances. Particularly if the decision isn't a massively important one. Sometimes I suspect that my decision-making is somehow wrongly biased, and that I might get better results by taking myself out of the equation to some extent. So for example it might be useful when I'm writing or recording music, because I often feel that my own habitual ways of doing things have become too narrow, hackneyed and stale, and that a new change in direction might lead to more interesting results. But maybe it would be better to just ask another musician what they would do.

And maybe seeking advice would generally lead to better outcomes than just tossing coins, if you don't trust your own judgement or find it too time-consuming and tedious to use it all the time. I guess a potential problem is that it introduces some social complexity - you might be reluctant to reject their suggestions for fear of offending them, while you can always override what a coin tells you to do, without annoying the coin.

See original post: It's not just 'heads or tails' [via flipping coins] shaping decisions, but 'odd or even' numbers............

The guidelines of periodically letting chance play roles in common, mundane tasks are well.....just that.....guidelines; that is not a rigid rules based approach (a "goldilocks zone of sorts").