Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA)

One of the ways to increase motivation is to do something called a “Decisional Balance”. SMART Recovery prefers the term "Cost Benefit Analysis".

Here is what it looks like:

Example 1

Pros of watching	Cons of watching
Pros of change	Cons of no change:

Or:

Example 2

	Pros	Cons
Continuing with Porn & Masturbation
Stop Porn & Masturbation

This seems like a simple tool, but it’s actually incredibly powerful, and it could help you in many ways. So it’s worth investing a little bit of time in doing this exercise.

When you’ve finished these boxes, go through item by item and write down “short term”, or “long term” near each item. That’s it.  

Hopefully, this exercise will give you clarity of what you really want to do for yourself, the power of this exercise, is that it puts everything on one piece of paper.

Some days when you’re inspired, you’re thinking how great it can be to change. On days that you’re not inspired you think about why you want to continue and you forget about why you want to stop.  

Over here, when you’re putting them side by side on one piece of paper, it sort of makes things click. You start realizing, hey one second -  hey this is everything. These are all my feelings about the topic on this piece of paper, now what makes sense for me to do?

Am I ready to let go of the pros that are listed in the first box, all those great benefits of continuing what I’m doing? Am I ready to let go? Is it worth it for me?

Again, there are no right or wrong answers. And if you decide that you want to continue doing what you’re doing, there’s no one that could tell you differently. It’s not a mussar kind of thing, it’s something done between you and yourself to come to more clarity about what you really want. 

Notes

• The goal of the short term vs long term step is to deal with The Problem of Instant Gratification (PIG).
• In SMART Recovery this worksheet is followed by a discussion of short term and long term benefits, and how this sheet shows that most benefits of the DOC are short term.

Further Reading

• Decisional Balance on Wikipedia
• The CBA worksheet - 4 Questions on SMART Recovery. A list of questions to help you fill out each of the 4 boxes.

From GYE Members

• You wrote a very good reason, that it makes you feel unhappy in addition to knowing its assur. Unfortunately, as we know knowing its assur sometimes isn't enough. What you should do is sit down with a pen and a paper and list all the reasons why you want to break this habit, why it makes you unhappy. Then in another column write all the reasons why you want to continue. Weigh the pros and cons. What you will find is that technically you are sacrificing greater happiness and longlasting pleasure for short term small bursts of enjoyment with long aftereffects of unhappiness. Surely you will feel on an intellectual AND emotional levels that technically the pleasure of sin isn't all you made it out to be in the past. With this nice neat already made decision in your pocket, when you are confronted with desire it will seem easier to say no because it's not anymore a fight of deliciousness vs. religion, enjoyment vs. what you know is wrong, but rather a short few minute animalistic pleasure vs. much longer term pleasure. Now, that's a pretty simple decision. Of course it will be hard but this will definitely make it easier. (It changed everything for me). #Grant400
• Just to build upon what grant400 was saying, the mishna in Avos says:  וֶהֱוֵי מְחַשֵּׁב הֶפְסֵד מִצְוָה כְּנֶגֶד שְׂכָרָהּ, וּשְׂכַר עֲבֵרָה כְנֶגֶד הֶפְסֵדָהּ. I think that this exercise is most effective when one actually considers that maybe he should choose to continue with the aveira. If it is forgone conclusion, it doesn't really help as much because the decision comes from a place of guilt rather than strength and resolve. #Jj123