You know who we don’t want to take business advice from? That guy who runs his one-man business from his mom’s basement but is not shy of dishing advice to anyone who will listen. When you’re a self-made billionaire however, revered in business circles for your know-how and acumen, we’re willing to take some of that you have to say on board.

Seymour Schulich is a Canadian businessman who recently released a book called Get Smarter: Life and Business Lessons. In it he sung the virtues of a decision-making technique he learnt in a mathematics course half a century ago, swearing by its methods and crediting it with much of his success. Here’s Schulich telling Time how it works:

On one sheet of paper, list all the positive things you can about the issue in question, then give each one a score from zero to ten—the higher the score, the more important it is to you.

On another sheet, list the negative points, and score them from zero to ten—only this time, ten means it’s a major drawback. Suppose you are thinking of buying a house, and you tour one that’s in your price range, except the owners have painted every room to look like a giant banana. If you really hate yellow and can’t stand the thought of lifting a paint brush, you might give “ugly yellow house” a ten, and if it’s not that big a deal, maybe a two or a three.

Let’s look past the odd references to bananas and hating the colour yellow for a second. Here comes the cruncher:

If the positive score is at least double the negative score, you should do it—whatever “it” is. But if the positives don’t outweigh the negatives by that two-to-one ratio, don’t do it, or at least think twice about it.

Schulich believes the success of the technique lies in not allowing one or two factors to affect major life decisions, which in a way removes the emotive aspect and allows for clear, rational decision-making.

Sounds good to me. Now is it too early to crack that first Friday beer? Think I’m going to go with my gut on this one…

[source:time]