Care fight

I've noticed that a lot of people-related problems basically come down to who is willing to put the most effort or investment into the situation. Although there is often an official power structure, or theoretical selection criteria, decisions seem in practice to be made in line with whoever tries the hardest. Any objections are powered by a fixed quantity of caring, and eventually people run out and just go along with whatever. I like to call these situations care fights.

One of the best pieces of advice I've heard is never go into a meeting without knowing what you want out of it. That's not to say I always follow the advice, but whenever I have I've gotten great results. If you go in thinking "I guess we're having a meeting about something", this is classic care fight losing strategy, and there's a high chance you'll get railroaded into whatever gets decided. Although you might make a better decision if you had five minutes to go away and figure out what you care about, by that point the decision is already made unless someone cares enough to argue back.

Sales is another classic care fight. Salespeople drive you towards a close by caring a lot more than you do about it, and a sales situation without a plan is even worse than a meeting. If you aren't sure what you want when you go in, guaranteed you'll end up wanting what the salesperson wants you to want, or at least having to muster an enormous amount of caring to get back in control of the situation.

The ultimate extreme of the care fight is consensus building, a process by which a group is required to come to a unanimous (or near-unanimous) agreement to act. As long as there are even a small number of people who disagree, their issues are expected to be heard and worked with. While apparently some groups function well with this system, you can imagine that their decisions are heavily biased towards whoever cares the most, whether or not their ideas are the best.

On the other hand, a care fight may not be such a bad thing. In abstract I think it's good that someone who cares a lot about something should be more likely to get what they want than someone who doesn't care much. I think the trick is to be very militant about your level of caring. Something like what colour shirts to order, absolutely, lose that care fight. But something like a car sale or a business meeting can be very dangerous not to care about, because the people who do care the most are unlikely care about the same things you do.