I get it. You want to make the right decision. The best decision. And in many cases, the sheer amount of options you have to wade through sets you up to question the very decisions you make.
Friday, February 07, 2020
Decision Making 101: How To Be a Successful Decision-Maker
I get it. You want to make the right decision. The best decision. And in many cases, the sheer amount of options you have to wade through sets you up to question the very decisions you make.
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I struggle a lot with decision making, so this article is really helpful. I appreciate that it talks more about what goes into decision making and speaks candidly about making decisions you might not be completely happy with because it seems like a lot of articles on decision making are overly positive and assume that making the "best decision" never comes with consequences. I also think that this is a really good article for people that struggle more with indecision rather than struggling with making the right decision, which is probably more common? Putting everything in the scope of how much they will impact your life as a whole and correlating that to how much time you spend on making the decision is a great way for people to work on indecisiveness. Also, giving steps to make a decision is a lot more helpful than vague ideas about productivity and effective end-goal analysis (which I have read about in a number of other articles about effective decision making). Overall, I think that this article is a really good alternative because it makes you think about how you think about decisions, which is a lot more effective than expecting people to be able to change their behavior based on a couple of catchy subject titles.
I am particularly prone to hesitating when making decisions. I often seek my friends and get an enormous amount of contracting opinions, only to ignore them all and fall back on my original gut feeling. Not that my classmates and family don't give great advice, because they do. I just usually find it more difficult to deal with the consequences when I have not made the choice myself. I clicked on this article to aid the process for myself, but again I found myself not wanting to listen. But phrases such as "You won't always like your decision" and "Consider the risk of indecision" are strong points that remind me that a "gut feeling" cannot always be trusted. No matter how individual a decision may be, it usually has an effect on others, especially in theatre. What's even more important is this context is that once you make a decision, you have to communicate it to the team. This follows the concept of "immediatly taking action" because once you have made the choice, why hesitate?
I feel like I am horrible at making decisions. Looking at everything I have ever done--auditioned for school plays, decided where to work--I have always grappled with whether or not I should do it in the first place. On the other hand, though, I love being spontaneous in certain regards: signing up to go skydiving, applying for an international mission trip, taking a random weekend trip to New York City to visit a friend I barely talk to, getting my second piercing. Looking back on all of those decisions, they are the ones I seem to talk about the most.
All of these tips in this article were great, such as the suggestion of a pros and cons list. There were times towards the end of my senior year when I had no clue which university was right for me. I made an EXTENSIVE pros and cons list, and took that thing with me everywhere I went. Seriously, I would be in line in the grocery store and feel a sudden dread about my future. I would stare at that list and think some more because it was always on my mind. However, these tips seem easier said than done (probably because it is).
This is one of the most helpful articles I have read. I find that I am so bad at making decisions, but really only on little things that ultimately don’t really matter, like what to eat for dinner or what to wear just like the article mentions. The bigger decisions in my life I am so much better at. The best piece of advice from this article for me is really “if it won’t matter in 5 years, don’t spend more than 5 minutes on it.” I really appreciated how the article talked about how sometimes you won’t always like the decision you made. This happens to me all the time and I often beat myself up about it because I had the choice so this is on me. They also talk about how sometimes you say you don’t know but really you do know, you just don’t like the answer. This is also very common because I feel like saying you don’t know gives you a little hope that there is another option out there, but really all the options you know they are just bad. Some decisions just suck but still have to be made.
I agree that decision making can be very tough, and when we are forced to make multiple (larger scale) decisions constantly it can psychically fatigue us. What she says is so true, we become worried that the decisions we are making are wrong! In my opinion, this is a very straight forward article that talks a lot about common sense, but it is still nice to see it laid out in an article. I think that another helpful topic she could have talked more about is to find the courage to make decisions faster and with more confidence. I did heavily appreciate her section on not always liking the decisions we make, duh it’s going to happen! INDECISION IS DECISION!!! Thank you! I think that her process and 3 Ps are a little long-winded (you can’t think through all of these steps) but it is a nice way to start to think about the decision-making process as a whole.
These types of articles that try to clarify soft skills are often helpful to read through as a self check. Even though most of what they say is obvious, they often offer little tips on how to think about things, and they can often be helpful in noticing when you’re not good at something. I think I’m normally pretty good at decision making: I know what I value, I know what I don’t care about that much. I’m pretty good at making decisions that sacrifice things that are less important to me in order to maximize the things that are. Where I struggle is when I have two bad options, or worse, two good options that are mutually exclusive. The hardest decision I’ve ever made was declaring my option. I stressed about it for months because I wasn’t ready to let either choice go.
I think these tools are really helpful for analyzing the process of making a decision. I have definitely benefited from working through issues with my parents specifically because they use many of the tactics from the article - so many pivotal moments in my life have been reasoned out on my mom’s yellow legal pad and broken down into pro and con lists, logical statements and questions. I think the idea of breaking down a large question into small, more simple steps is really what allows me to make big decisions in the first place rather than be paralyzed by indecision and fear of making the wrong choice. And I think I definitely benefit from the idea of taking an abstract question and transforming it into data, into something more absolute. I’m usually not a very decisive person when it comes to small things, such as choosing what to eat for dinner, but with large, important decisions I’ve definitely used and benefited from these tactics, and ones similar to them.
I find it quite amusing that someone actually went through and analyzed decision making and came up with a 101 based off of their findings. I wonder if this actually helps. You know, the hard-to-make-a-decison people have to make a decision as to whether they'll trust and take this advice... "Many people are overwhelmed by choice, plagued by indecision..." that sounds dramatic but I relate to that on a spiritual level. Sometimes it is just so hard to decide. On the 1 to 5 importance scale, when things are at a 5 for me, that's when I decide that I have to let the forces of the world make that decision for me. The stakes are too high at that point for me to just decide. Either that, or I sleep on it for days and ponder every possible outcome. The sad truth is that sometimes you just have to end up making a decision even when you are unsure and see how things play out. Just have a strategy or a plan for how you will deal with things if they start going left based off of that decision.
Decision making can be very difficult. I feel like I am given opportunities or choices that are difficult to choose from because they are both desirable or that I can't afford to do them. What makes decision making so frustrating for me is how much time I can waste making up a decision. At times, I think it is better to go with the first thing you think of rather than to ponder about it and think about what you will potentially miss. That being said, it is also good to have a system that is reliable and can make decision making productive. To break options down into smaller sections will give a good perspective to look at things. I appreciate how this article talks about the "3 P's" being perspective, process, and preference. These different steps are good to analyze different options and can be a more broken down way to create a pros and cons list.
I am somebody that overthinks. Like, notoriously. Even sending a slightly risky text takes days of deliberation, editing, revisions, and panic. It’s sort of an all-consuming problem that seriously affects my life. I’ve learned ways to deal with it, though. My way of dealing is something briefly touched on in this article, and that’s to go with my gut. I follow my heart when it comes to decisions. Even if it doesn’t make entirely logical sense, if I feel it in my heart, I will do it. This has done me very well. If I feel in my heart that this text needs to be sent, I need to do it. When I was considering transferring high schools, I knew in my heart I would be happier elsewhere. I was right. It changed the course of my life dramatically. I’ve learned that decisions in life are just life lessons. If you made the right one, yay. If you made the wrong one, boy did you learn something. That has been the mindset that has made me so much more confident about making concise decisions and putting myself out there. I realize I sound like Chidi from The Good Place right now, but so be it. Oh, also, for the love of all things good, always sleep on it before making it final.
Decision-making can often be a very difficult task, especially for people who want to take into account all perspectives into their process of making a decision (and I can definitely say that I am one of these people. I like the idea of reframing the decision-making process into the three-pronged concept of perspective, process and preference, because it gives a deeper grasp to the idea of how to effectively make decisions. As this article discusses, there is definitely a balance in time on making decisions and it can be a fine line to walk depending on the intensity of the decision being made at hand. I think the biggest takeaway from this article is that every decision is symbolic of growth, because we are all people learning how to make our way through life. While these are great tools for learning how to make effective decisions, I think it’s really important to reframe your mindset on decision making, because it will change from decision to decision and person to person, so knowing where the limits lie will be really helpful through this process.
Making decisions is something I always struggle with because I tend to always overanalyze everything and get overwhelmed with trying to make the “right” decision. I keep myself paranoid over starting a project or using a material when I’m not completely sure that it’s what will give me a desired result, and the constant questioning myself can really get in the way of being productive. I think this article in general covered things that I knew already, but it was kind of helpful having someone else spell it out for me and give me a reminder about it. Some of the things in the article seemed kind of weird though, such as “ask for divine guidance” like tarot cards or “eat the decision” but I guess different things work for different people. I usually ask my dad for advice since he’s pretty good at talking through thought processes to help come to conclusions.
Deeply analyzing the future situations and making decisions in advance always worked the best in my life up to this point. This strategy worked because I have just been following the path laid out for me by others, and I made decisions only for minor adjustments. I could choose whether to go to an international school or to a public school, but I still had to go to a school. I could choose whether to study Economics or Drama but I had no choice but go to the university. In these cases, where I could predict what kind of decisions I would face in the future, it was always better to make decisions in advance so that I can take time considering all available choices. However, I recently started to feel like this strategy is not working anymore. After graduating the university, there are too many possible paths in life, and none of them are predetermined. I knew in how many years I would enter university, but there is no way to anticipate when I would get married. I believe, as we get older, we have to make quicker instinctive decisions. This means that you have to be comfortable enough to believe in your instincts. Keeping the tips that article gives in my mind, I would like to work on my own confidence.
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