Listing out pros and cons is the one thing everybody does.
But, like many other mass-used techniques, it is so flawed.
First. It makes those decisions look better where pros are numerically more than cons. Completely disregarding that not all pros and cons are equal. Like death > losing money.
And also that most pros have a limit to how good they can be, while cons do not.
Instead, rate how good each pro is on a scale of 1 to 10 and how bad each con is on a scale of -10 to -1. And sum the values up. The higher the better the decision is.
Second. Pros/cons sometimes are chances of something good/bad happening, the value of which is difficult to calculate. Like the chance of winning a lottery. Or that of death.
Use this: Expected value of each pro/con
= probability of getting the pro/con
(take an educated guess or study the history, if you don’t have hard numbers) × absolute value of pro/con
(or a rating of how good/bad the pro/con is)
Like Expected Value (of buying a lottery ticket) = 1/1,000,000 × $1,000,000 = $1.