How to Make Good Decisions
One of the things we frequently do in our daily lives is to make decisions. From the time you wake up to the time you go to bed. Your life is a direct consequence of all of them, therefore, you should learn to make good ones.
Improve Your Decision Making
Are you one of those people who has a hard time every day to pick what to wear? When you meet up with a friend for a drink, do you always leave the responsibility of choosing the place for the other person? Is going to a buffet hell because you are overwhelmed by so much food to choose from?
When we think about making decisions, we usually think about big and transcendent decisions like doing a postgraduate degree at this or that university, or whether it’s time to get married and have children.
But throughout the day, we make decisions on a daily basis. Having eggs or cereal for breakfast, going to the movies or the theater, and so on. And on all those occasions, it’s these little decisions that make all the difference.
Common Barriers to Making Decisions
Part of the ineffectiveness in making decisions has to do with not knowing how to recognize our attitude.
Focus on What You Reject
Do not look at what you can lose, what in economics is known as the opportunity cost, but at what you can gain by making that choice. In this way, you will not fall into the dreaded paralysis of analysis, which is nothing more or less than not making any decision due to overanalysis.
Delaying Decision Making
We became procrastinators. We’re procrastinating about what we should be deciding now. If you wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything, is ready, is clear, and there is no risk or uncertainty, you will never make a decision. To avoid this attitude, set yourself a deadline for resolution and stick to it.
Fear of Making a Mistake
Mistakes are part of the success process. Successful people make a lot of errors. What happens is that they make mistakes early, at low cost, and only once. That’s the idea. You’re going to make mistakes countless times. And those mistakes will be great lessons for you. So lose the fear of being wrong.
Tips for Making Good Decisions
Establish What is Priority and Secondary in Your Life
First things first. And many times, we don’t put first things first before making a decision, and we end up making decisions based on our lives’ secondary objectives.
Make a list of the essential things in your life, five things. And rate them from 1 to 5 according to their importance. And when you have to make a decision, ask yourself how your choice affects these five things in order. If it favors them, you’re making the right decision. If it doesn’t support them, you’re making the wrong decision.
Set Limits
Set limits that you won’t go past when making decisions. In other words, make that decision before you make the decision. This avoids making the decision by letting your emotions interfere and protects you from yourself.
If You Have Made a Wrong Decision, Let It Go
Let it go as soon as possible. Life’s too short to insist on things that don’t get you anything.
Sometimes we make the wrong decision and hope it will change. We get stubborn. Every day that passes where you have been emotionally involved and invested more time, money, and resources, it costs you more to make a mistake.
This applies to a book that you have started to read, and you are not enjoying, a course that is not what you expected, or a relationship that isn’t working.
Accept the Worst-Case Scenario
Assess what the worst-case scenario is for making a decision. This is important because if you are prepared for the worst possible situation, accept it, and can cope with it; then you don’t have to be afraid to make that decision.
Simplify and stay with no more than three alternatives
Instead of thinking about ten possible options, try to reduce them as much as possible to no more than three. The fewer choices we have, the less our mind will be wandering, and therefore we will make better decisions.
Make the Decision When You Take Action
Action is the bridge that connects thoughts with results. So in any decision, the process of deciding does not end when we think about it, but when we take action.
Trust Your Intuition and Creative Ideas
It is often thought that people who make decisions in a rational and meditated manner are not usually driven by intuition. Intuition is that thought, that feeling that is on an unconscious plane, and that produces different sensations depending on what you think.
According to studies on people who, because of their type of work, have to make decisions continuously, half of them say that they are driven by intuition.
This group ensures that intuition can be trained. As you make more decisions, your intuition is refined based on experience, allowing you to make creative decisions. Making wise decisions is not at odds with being driven by intuition.
Seek Silence
It’s hard to make the right decisions in our frantic daily lives. It’s very easy to stop making decisions because of having to do things. A little quiet time is the best thing you can do to make decisions.
Seek a moment of total silence. Go to the park, the beach, or find a place where you can be quiet, and nobody bothers you.
It’s time to take a piece of paper and apply some of these techniques. You don’t have to use them all at once. Keep the ones you like or think are best for you.
