I have long thought we as a society fail to teach people a process for making a decision. We do teach yes-no, black-white, on-off absolutes, but the fuzzy edges are often left in limbo. The absolutes are Boolean logic. The discussion and tool at hand are fuzzy logic, wherein the not so clear answers are illuminated. Please open the file titled Home Performance Decision Tool from the column of files on the left. There is an instruction page, a sample form representing a water heating question, and a blank "homeowner" form.
This Excel file is founded on the premise that there are three components to a decision: Your criteria, your weighting of those criteria, and a scoring of all your options. When put together the yield is your decision. This process is critical to solving questions from the mundane to those life changing quandaries. Everyone's criteria is slightly different, and surely weighted to each personality. We'll be back to this topic again; understanding that buyers' decision-making criteria vary is critical to making a sale, and every solution sold by the green advocates may not be right for you. Spend a few minutes with the Decision tool.
