Can’t Decide? This $247 Coach Will Make the Call

Plus! Work-from-home-wear reader poll results!! A fancy new literary review!!!

Hello everyone,

Welcome to Issue #150 of CAFÉ ANNE!

So last week’s feature, “What We’re Wearing For Work When No One is Looking,” included a poll which revealed quite a bit about the CAFÉ ANNE crowd. The results:

First, according to national surveys, about 35% of Americans work from home. But if this poll is any indication, the work-from-home crowd accounts for the vast majority of CAFÉ ANNE readers. This is because we’ve got it all figured out.

Second, nationwide, only 6% of those who work from home dress like they’re going to the office. But almost double the number of CAFÉ ANNE readers said this is their standard WFH attire. This is, of course, because we’re a classy, classy bunch. We’re also less far likely to work in our pajamas (10% of CAFÉ ANNE readers vs 17% nationally).

In the comments, readers shared the strategies they use to trick their brains into thinking it’s time to get to work. “Putting on jewelry is what really mentally tells me it's work time,” wrote Megan, who otherwise works in jeans and shuns makeup. “Oddly, during Covid times, I sometimes found myself putting on perfume before big meetings,” wrote Katie of her adventures on Zoom.

And lots of folks admitted to donning what Jennifer A. referred to as “The Mullet of Workwear” —pajama bottoms paired with a work-appropriate top. Quelle horreur! People, if you’re going to Zoom with me, please put on your pants.

In other news, as promised, I am on week two of not doing anything to distract myself while riding the subway. This week, my only ride was on the 4 train to Grand Central on a Friday evening. I took notes on what I observed, and here is an excerpt:

-People on their phones

-People on their phones

-People on their phones

-Man inserting a MetroCard into his own mouth

The destination, by the way, was a launch party for The Metropolitan Review, a NYC-based journal that “seeks to reinvigorate high culture.” I am on the editorial board, and I have no idea what that means! The Review has a Substack, of course, and you can (and should!) subscribe here.

Finally, huge cheapest-eggs-are-$8.99-at-the-Foodtown-on-Clinton-Street shoutouts to this week’s new paid subscribers Elizabeth H., Jonathan, founding member Ruth Ann H., and Marc W. Plus, a nice Venmo donation from anonymous, who wishes to remain anonymous. That’s enough $$$ for 132 omelets!

I am very excited for this week’s issue, of course. We’ve got a Q&A with Nell Wulfhart, a professional decision maker. Please enjoy.

Regards!

Anne

ITEMS OF INTEREST

An Encyclopedia of Unknowns

NYC Hot Dog Cart Economics

Effect of Swearing on Physical Performance

Sideshow at JFK

DEPT. OF WEIRD OCCUPATIONS

Can’t Decide? This $247 Coach Will Make the Call

Nell Wulfhart

I first learned of Nell Wulfhart a few weeks ago when she took out a classified ad in this newsletter to advertise her service. She's a professional decision coach! Her tagline said it all: "Your therapist won’t tell you what to do, but I will."

Ms. Wulfhart, a former journalist, launched her decision-making service in 2013. She's since worked with thousands of clients who can't decide whether they should leave their partner or quit their job or move to L.A.

Clients pay per decision—$247—and Ms. Wulfhart aims to provide an answer in a single phone session, which typically lasts about an hour.

What? I had to learn more. In our Zoom chat, Ms. Wulfhart and I talked about her business, why some people have such a hard time making decisions and our favorite decision-making strategies. I’ve done a lot of condensing to the Q&A that follows to make it readable, of course. Please enjoy!

So what is a decision coach?

A decision coach is a job I made up. But I think all jobs are made up. A decision coach is basically someone who will help you make a big decision in a single session.

What decisions do people typically come to you for?

Lots of career decisions: 'Should I take this job offer?' 'Should I leave journalism?' 'Should I start a side gig, go freelance?' And then there's things like, 'Should I get a divorce?' 'Should I have a baby?' 'What should I name my baby?'

Then there's the outliers like, 'I adopted a dog and now I want to re-home the dog. Should I do that?' Or 'I got a tattoo, and I don't like it, should I get rid of it?' 'What color should I paint my kitchen?'

There's a lot of people in LA thinking about moving to New York, and people in New York thinking about moving to LA.

What's the most picayune problem you've been asked to solve?

I think it was the kitchen painting one. I was surprised that somebody would pay me to help them with that. But when I heard the situation, I was just like, 'Oh, I get it.' Their house had caught on fire. She had been making decorating and renovation decisions for a full year, and this was the last one, and she had just run out of decision-making energy.

Has anyone come to you wondering whether they should commit suicide?

No! Jesus, no. I do sometimes get emails from people that I think are suffering from serious anxiety. They might send me a really long email, for example, with lots of attachments. You can kind of tell: 'This person has problems I can't solve,' in which case I send them an email saying, 'I don't think I can help. Have you considered talking to a therapist about this?'

What's your favorite kind of decision?

Definitely relationship decisions. I will say that the answer to, 'Should I break up with this person?' 98% of the time, is ‘yes’. If you're calling a stranger on the internet about this, you probably have one foot out the door already.

But these are hard decisions for people to make, because they're so emotional and really not about pros and cons. And it's very satisfying, because when you can help somebody get out of a relationship that they really shouldn't be in, or really want to be done with, it feels like, 'Wow, I'm really helping this person move into the next stage of their life.'

Can you walk me through what happens after someone contacts you?

Usually they just book right away online. And then when I get on the phone with them, they're often like, 'Oh, I'm nervous. I don't know what this is going to be like.' And I try to reassure them.

The first thing I ask is to tell me the decision in a single sentence—to be very specific about what is the decision you want to make today. And to frame both sides of the decision. Not just 'Should I quit my job?' But 'Should I quit my job, or stay on my job for another two years?' Just getting them to frame the decision very clearly—so I know exactly what we're dealing with.

Then I get some general background information. How old they are, what they like to do for fun, what they like to do for work, who they live with. Because any big decision is going to affect every part of your life.

Throughout the whole thing, I'm just asking a lot of questions. You can tell a lot from the way somebody phrases something, or the kind of enthusiasm they have when they're describing something, or the energy. It really does become clear what this person actually wants to do.

So what you're really doing is finding out what they want to do. And the premise is that what they want to do and what they should do are the same thing.

Not always, but 98% of the time. The truth about decision making is that people mostly do what they want to do, especially in romantic relationships. There’s no amount of finger wagging I can do that's going to make somebody leave a bad relationship if they don't already want to leave it. Most people will do what they want to do, but they want to be reassured that it's okay for them to do that. I'm just giving them a permission slip.

There are cases when the thing that they ought to do is not the thing that they want to do. But I can only think of one example like that. It was a guy whose marriage was ending and he wanted to move across the country, away from his kids. And I was just like, 'Don't do it, bro.'

What makes you qualified to be a decision coach?

In terms of certifications? Absolutely nothing. Basically it comes down to, I am just naturally really good at this. I have always had a fixer mentality. If somebody comes to me with a problem, my brain will immediately start to fix it. And empathy is a really overused word, but I do feel like I have a lot of empathy, and I love talking to people and hearing these problems.

I get that you love doing this. I would too! But how do you know that you actually help people make the right decision?

Well, I get a lot of great testimonials. And at the end of the call, most people are feeling so relieved, and so energized—feeling good and confident. Any decision is better than no decision. Just getting anyone to the point where they're ready to move forward is a huge win.

Has anyone ever come back to you later and said, ‘We made the wrong decision’?

I think maybe once or twice someone has written to me and said, ‘I took this job and things didn't work out.’ But if you wind up working for a total lunatic, maybe you couldn’t have foretold that.

Most therapists won't make a decision for their clients because they want their clients to learn how to make a decision on their own. Are you doing people a disservice?

I'm definitely helping them. I'm a big fan of therapy. I recommend therapy to people all the time. But a lot of people have been in therapy for many months or years, trying to figure out a big decision, delving deep into the why. And I think that therapy can sometimes do those people a disservice by keeping them stuck.

If they just made the decision like, 'Okay, I'm gonna move across the country,' I think that just making the decision—taking action on it—is so much more productive and efficient. So like I said, 'Your therapist won't tell you what to do, but I will.' People appreciate being told what to do.

Over the weekend, I showed your website to a friend who's a therapist, and he said that, quote, 'A normal person would not hire her,' and that your typical client was likely 'an affluent person with a low IQ.' Any response to that?

Well, first of all, don't hold back! Tell me what you really think! I think that is really uninformed. I would definitely not say that most of my clients are affluent, absolutely not. Does this friend think nobody needs help making decisions? That everyone is great at making decisions except rich, dumb people?

My clients are in a huge economic range, all kinds of people all over the world, making all kinds of decisions. And honestly, most of my clients, you’d think that they'd be chronically indecisive people who every day are like, 'What do I have for breakfast?' But most times, they're high-achieving types running corporations, having families. And every once in a while, they just get hung up on some decision and can't make it.

It happens to everybody, it's a universal problem. Every once in a while, there's just one decision you really get stuck on, and all I can do is get them over the hump, and then they go back to being a decisive, smart, contributing member of society. Your friend can suck it.

I have a few friends who have a terrible time with every little decision. We'll go out for dinner, and they will take ten minutes to decide what to order, and then they instantly have regrets. It's really agonizing for them.

Fear of regret and fear of change account for so much of the difficulty in decision making. And then there's some people who are just more anxious than others, more over-thinkers than others.

There's also people who are maximizers, not satisfiers. People who are maximizers want—in every single thing—to get the maximum value out of it. So if they're picking a slow cooker, they will spend ten hours reading every article and researching. They want the very best slow cooker. The people who are satisfiers, they're just like, 'Does it cook things slow? Great! Done!'

I'm glad you brought up fear of regret. The one thing that made it easier for me to make decisions is something a mentor told me ten years ago. I was having trouble making the most stupid little decision—something along the lines of, 'Should I go to this event or not?' And she said, 'What if you told yourself that no matter what happened after you chose A or B, you wouldn't be mad at yourself?'

I realized that what I'm really worried about is not the outcome of the decision, but that if it goes badly, I'll be upset with myself. That's what I'm really scared of. So ever since, I've told myself, 'Anne, you're going to make the best decision you can with the information on-hand. And no matter how f'd up the result might be, you're not going to be mad at yourself.' So now decisions are easy!

Love it. It's about separating the decision from the outcome. You can only control the decision. You cannot 100% control the outcome. So giving yourself that grace of, 'Look, I did the best I could,'—that's a good way to cut off regret.

Are you good at making decisions for yourself?

Yes, yes, yes. And I take action on things very quickly. I think taking action on something fast is maybe the number one way in which I have improved my life. Just making a decision and taking action.

One difficult decision I had to make recently was whether to quit writing a business column I'd been writing for several years. It took three months. But actually what happened is that I decided I wanted to quit, and then I took three months to get ready to quit. And then it was easy to quit!

I don't think you would have called me about that decision, right? Because you knew you wanted to do. You just had to get there.

I'm not saying people should make all their decisions in a hurry, absolutely not. I'm just saying that way, way, way more people take way too much time to make a decision than too little. They lose so much of their lives and their happiness.

There are times when people make a terrible decision because they are overreacting to something, right? When I'm feeling wound up or upset, I hopefully won't even try to make a decision. I think, 'Wait until you've calmed down. Because you're literally crazy right now.'

Totally agree. And don't make a big decision within six months of losing a really close loved one, or ending a really long relationship. When you're really in your feelings. You really could regret that decision a lot down the line.

I like to talk with others. Not to ask what they think I should do, because that's BS. But they might have a perspective, or some information I'd never have considered in a million years.

I think that's great. I have one friend who always manages to ask me a question that I'd never have thought of. So she's a great person to go to for advice.

How do you get a sense of when you've talked to enough people?

When the things you're adding to the pros-and-cons list are getting really minor, or when you're not getting any new information. If you talk to five people and no one has asked you a provocative question or introduced something new, that's kind of all you're gonna get.

I'm glad you brought up the pros-and-cons list. I feel that, in any decision, there are an infinite number of variables at play—including unknown unknowns. So basing my decision entirely on the handful I am aware of feels ridiculous. No amount of analyzing them is going to help. So usually after I talk to a few people, I'll try to just shut up and get quiet and let the answer come from within. I'll even pray. I don't believe in a creator-God, but I do think there's a universal wisdom I can tap that knows a good deal more about what's at play than I do.

And she charges $247 a session! Just kidding. Yeah, I'm not against the pros-and-cons list, but I think, for most people, it's just what you said. The decision is within them, and they're stuck between the thing that they want to do and the thing that looks good on paper.

Another difficulty can be factoring in the happiness of other people. I think in the end, if I'm only considering myself, it won't go well, because karma. Any thoughts about that?

When people call me, they're like, 'Oh, I got a great job offer. Should I move my family to this new place?' That is a hard decision to make, for sure. It can't just be about, ‘Do I want this new job?’

But here's the thing: you can't think too much about how other people will be affected by the decision at the cost of your own happiness and fulfillment. Like, a lot of people have parents who have certain expectations for them. Maybe you're going to make your parents unhappy, but sometimes you just have to do that.

My thinking is, 'If I make this decision just to make somone happy, will I wind up hating them? Then don't do it!'

Yes, many people have made sacrifices for someone else's happiness and then ended up full of resentment. It's very common. Don't sacrifice your own happiness for someone else's in a way that's going to make you resent them.

For people who don't want to hire decision coach, or maybe they don't have the $247, but they're buying into this notion that all they really need to know is what they actually want—can they walk themselves through a process to arrive at that understanding?

Totally! Everyone who does a session with me, I give them two exercises to do before the session.

One is you make a list of your values. Not moral values, but what are the things that make me happy in my everyday life? 'I like to wear sweatpants every day,' or 'I need to be outside and close to nature,' or 'I want to talk to my kids every day.’ The smaller and more seemingly inconsequential, the better. Put everything on there, and you can use that almost as a checklist. When you're making a decision between A and B, which one of those things ticks more boxes on the list of values? That's probably what you should do.

The second is to just sketch out your ideal life in one year, in five years and in ten years. It's really hard, but if you make yourself do it, you often realize, 'Oh, I actually could have that.' People are not putting down, 'I want to be on a mega yacht in the Aegean Sea.' It's like, 'I'd like to have a garden and maybe work part-time.' It's usually a very achievable dream. And then when you're trying to decide between option A and option B, you can look at the way you want your future to be and be like, 'Which option is going to get me there faster?'

And how about throwing darts?

Not a bad option! If you're so stuck that you're throwing darts or tossing a coin, then it doesn't really matter which choice you end up on. The important thing—and I cannot emphasize this enough—is that ANY decision is better than no decision.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“There is no species of optimism so sturdy in character or noble in construction that it can remain unshaken during a bus ride through northern New Jersey.”

—Brian Morton

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