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Now list the Good Results of watching TV rather than doing homework. You may come up with “Fun” or “Be able to talk about the show with my friends.” For the Bad Results, you may recognize that “I will get in trouble at school,” and “My parents will be upset.” You may even realize that, “I may not learn what I need to learn for the next test.” The main point of this exercise is for you to get into the habit of realistically looking at the results of your behavior and basing your decisions on what is in your best self-interest. Unfortunately for Jeff, he never conducted this type of evaluation.
When you are first learning to use this Benjamin Franklin Decision Making technique, it is okay for teacher or your parent to help you with some of the less obvious consequences. For example, if you don’t do your homework and do poorly on the next test, you may begin to think you can’t do the work and quit trying to learn the subject. You should also think about the future impact of your decision. For example, if you don’t learn how to study now, you won’t know how to study in the higher grades and it will be difficult for you to graduate from high school.
The idea of the Benjamin Franklin method of decision making is that whichever side has the most responses, the “Good” or “Bad”, determines which decision should be made. The purpose of this exercise is to help you start recognizing all of the consequences of your decisions and not focus on only the emotional response (fear, anxiety, anger or just one aspect of the consequences (all my friends will be talking about the TV show.
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