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HOW TO BE A SUCCESS AT EVERYTHING

Your ultimate decision-making guide to help you make better choices faster

We have to make hundreds of decisions every day. Here’s what might be holding you back and what you can do to improve your decision-making skills.

Your ultimate decision-making guide to help you make better choices faster

[Photo: Ben Sweet/Unsplash]

BY Jennifer Alseverlong read

We make hundreds of tiny and monumental decisions in our lives—from what coffee drink we want from the seemingly endless menu to what careers we should pursue. Yet many of us don’t know how to approach the decision-making process, or find ourselves overwhelmed and stressed by the number or magnitude of choices we need to make.

It happens to the best of us: analysis paralysis. Too much information, too many choices, and a deep fear of making the wrong decision can cause you to ruminate for hours. Yet not only does overthinking waste precious time and keep you from moving forward, it can lead to making worse decisions and hurt your health, including increasing anxiety and depression and destroying your sleep. 

Here’s your guide to all things decision-making—why it’s so important, what might be holding you back, and what you can do to make better decisions.  

Why is decision-making so important?

Any skill or ability we rely on dozens or even hundreds of times per day is one we ought to hone—for our own benefit. Decision-making is one of them.

We’re called upon daily to make decisions at home and at work. Some are small and unlikely to have long-term consequences—such as when to schedule a team meeting or what to cook for dinner. But others might alter the course of our lives or careers—such as whether to have children.

If you find yourself spending more time on picking than watching a movie, or if deciding what restaurant or hotel to book can turn into a six-hour existential crisis, you’re keenly aware of how disruptive indecision can be to your everyday life.

At a time when we have access to ballooning quantities of information and an increasing number of options, we might find ourselves overwhelmed. There are now so many uncertainties and, at the same time, so much data that it can create immense stress and an unconscious feeling of impotence.

Whether it’s setting strategy based on consumer research, designing new products, putting together a team, or deciding on a future career move, nothing seems painless and straightforward, and the potential to think about hypothetical scenarios and outcomes creates a sort of decision fatigue, consuming our mental resources like the memory RAM of a 90s computer.

While we can’t stop the world from becoming more complex, we can and should address our ability to make better decisions in the face of ever-growing complexity and uncertainty.

“Decisions are forks in the road,” says Mike Whitaker, author of The Decision Makeover: An Intentional Approach To Living The Life You Want. “We are an active participant. We get out of life what we choose,” he says. “Good things come to those who decide.”

What can hold you back from making good decisions (or any at all)?

Here are a few common things that can get in the way of the decision-making process:

Biases

There are a number of cognitive biases that can cloud human decision processes, including, but not limited to:

  • Confirmation bias: As Deborah Grayson Riegel put it, confirmation bias is “our tendency to search for, interpret, and prefer information that confirms or supports what we already believe.” But, she writes, you can counteract it to make a more informed decision. “Prove yourself wrong. Actively seek out information that is counterintuitive, contradictory, or outside of your comfort zone, and be willing to consider new evidence.”
  • Expedience bias: “We often have a preference for quick decisions and actions, rather than taking the time to get more clarity and understanding,” Riegel wrote. It often comes up when people feel hurried or depleted.
  • Sunk-cost fallacy: “The term sunk cost refers to any cost (not just monetary, but also time and effort) that has been paid already and cannot be recovered,” Belle Beth Cooper wrote. Since we have a tendency to emphasize loss over gain, she explained, “the sunk-cost fallacy leads us to miss or ignore the logical facts presented to us and instead make irrational decisions based on our emotions—without even realizing we’re doing so.”

Fear and anxiety

Oftentimes, overthinking can be driven by a big emotion: fear. The fear that you’ll make the wrong decision can be paralyzing.

And when anxiety takes over, you’re far more likely to make a bad decision, because it impacts the parts of the brain responsible for decision-making and for memory. So if you’ve faced this kind of decision before, you could be flooded with fear, anxiety, and stress. Often, that anxiety ultimately leads to a state of passivity. You don’t make any decision because you’re afraid you’ll make the wrong one.

But fear often appears bigger than it is, according to professional coach Kristin Brownstone. She recommends breaking down the components of that fear and handling each component one by one. Remember that just because something didn’t work out in the past doesn’t mean the outcome will be the same every time.  

Instead of mulling over what could go wrong, start focusing on what could go right. Visualize those things and keep them at the forefront of your mind. 

Perfectionism

If you’re a perfectionist, you might want to collect every possible piece of relevant information and contemplate every nuance of every option before making a final call—but that’s not always realistic.

“The army, for example, employs a 70% rule in decision-making,” wrote Jim Frawley. “Once you have 70% of the information available, you can move forward. To achieve progress, a ‘good’ decision on time is better than a perfect decision too late.”

20 tips to help you make good decisions

Hone your decision-making skills and decision-making process using this expert advice:

1. Know what size decision you’re making.

Successful people recognize that there are small, medium, and large decisions. “Small decisions impact you for a day, such as what you wear and what you eat,” Whitaker says. “Medium decisions impact your life for a year or so, such as deciding to go back to school or take on a roommate. They affect your life, but they aren’t crash-and-burn moments.”

“You’ll make 150 small decisions a day,” Whitaker says, and successful people don’t spend a lot of mind share on this kind of minor decision-making because the risk of future consequences is low. So make sure you know what type of decision you’re looking at.

2. Stop hoarding decisions.

If you spend too much time mulling trivial decisions, such as what to wear or how to respond to a tweet, the mental effort will leave you exhausted. 

Good decision-making means focusing your energy instead on important and consequential decisions, whether that’s contacting a potential client or learning a new skill. Use your energy to make complex things more simple. Don’t pile onto mini decisions that will fundamentally make you bad at making big, important decisions.

3. Define the decision.

Make sure you have a clear understanding of the choice you’re making. For example, a job change affects not only your work responsibilities but also other factors like your commute, your salary, your coworkers, and so on. Defining the key factors that both go into and will be affected by your decision helps you quickly discern whether (and why) you’re excited about a particular option. Maybe that new job sounds great, but you just can’t stomach a two-hour commute every day.

4. Book time to think.

It may feel counterintuitive, but making decisions faster requires consciously giving yourself time to make them. Decision-making is a task. For smaller decisions, you may only need to set aside 30 minutes or an hour; for larger ones, you might schedule a few hours over the course of a few weeks. Add these time blocks to your calendar and to-do lists.

During those blocks, psychotherapist Amy Morin suggests, give yourself freedom to think about the issue. But if thoughts pop into your mind any other time outside of that, push them away with the intent of considering them later.

Overthinking problems can consume you all day or seep into time spent at work. It elevates your stress levels and makes you feel completely overwhelmed—and unhappy.   

Not only does it save you from thinking about the problem during other important times, such as a family dinner or business meeting, but it will give your brain a break too—and as a result the answer may come to you more easily.

5. Identify your options and prioritize.

Instead of limiting yourself to a “yes” or “no” choice, brainstorm all the possible options before making a decision—you may find compromises and alternatives that weren’t easy to see initially.

Patti Johnson, CEO and founder of PeopleResults, suggests listing out possible options, including doing nothing, and pulling in others to allow the best ideas to emerge. Because if you know all of the potential paths, you can find clarity—even if the perfect solution isn’t on the list.

Weigh options based on what’s most important to you and eliminate the rest, she said. That part is key: Psychological science has long suggested that while we love our freedom, too much choice can be paralyzing. It not only stops you from making decisions, it actually boosts anxiety and dissatisfaction with your choices. 

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The world isn’t going to get any less complex, so it’s vital that you sit back and prioritize. Does your decision take you away from your goals or toward them?

6. Consider your decision-making style.

Exploitation decision-makers choose options that are familiar and provide a higher certainty for reward, while exploration decision-makers test out unfamiliar choices. 

When you’re under excessive pressure, the tendency is to repeat choices and explore less, according to Barbara J. Sahakian, professor of clinical neuropsychology, and Aleya A. Marzuki, a PhD candidate in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. 

The best way to make a decision? Switch flexibly between exploration and exploitation. “On the one hand, exploration can be highly beneficial, as trying out novel options can enable you to potentially reap better benefits and enable you to make better choices in the future,” Marzuki said. “On the other hand, if the new option turns out to be inferior, it can be costly in terms of time, effort, and potentially monetary resources.”

7. Talk it through.

Some people are verbal processors; they organize their thoughts by talking them out. If that’s you, then having a discussion could be your fastest route to a good decision. You don’t need to speak with someone who’s knowledgeable on the topic. You just need a good listener who’ll give you time and space to hear out your monologue and occasionally reflect back to you what you’ve shared. You’re likely to come to a decision by the end of the conversation, even if the other person says very little.

8. Ask for new perspectives.

Sometimes you need more than just a sounding board; you actually need advice. Asking someone else for their opinion typically works best when you’re considering doing something that you’ve never done before, and when you know someone who’s experienced in that domain. When you’re leaning in a given direction already, seeking out wise counsel can help you reach a smart decision faster. Just be careful not to blindly accept advice. A choice that may make sense for someone else might not be right for you. If you find yourself uncomfortable with what they’ve proposed, you don’t have to go through with it, but you may realize the conversation nudged you toward a decision anyhow.

9. Tamp down the anxiety.

Feeling stressed about a decision you need to make—especially if it’s time sensitive—is natural. 

It’s a good idea to learn mindfulness skills to calm your brain and nervous system and keep yourself from ruminating over problems and stories. Give your brain some healthy sleep and reframe your decision from loss-oriented thinking to gain-oriented thinking. Even writing down your emotions in a journal can be a tool to tame the worry. 

10. Listen to your body.

Leadership consultant Diana Chapman says the best decisions are accompanied by a “whole-body yes.”

Everyone has their unique way to experience a whole-body yes, tuning into whether they are fully aligned with a decision with their whole body—head, heart, and gut.

Chapman, who advises executives as founder of the Conscious Leadership Group, suggests thinking of a time when you experienced something that felt of service to you and others, or a time when you felt in flow and connected. “How do you feel in your body as you think back to that experience?” she asks. Now, when pondering an answer to a decision, how does it feel in your body? The same?

Chapman says that when people say yes without really experiencing a whole yes in their body, it can lead to resentment that can grow over time. People often don’t honor those yeses and nos when they make a decision based on fear of missing out, of being unkind or alone, or doing something wrong, she says.

11. No seriously, listen to your gut.

Your gut reaction could be more important than you think. The gut contains many of the same neurotransmitters as the brain and uses those to send information to the brain. Your intuition can help filter the decisions that you send up to get your brain involved in processing. Research is starting to reveal the large part intuition plays in productivity and better decision-making.

Obviously, gut feelings can’t replace data and evidence, but they can lead you in a clear direction. 

12. Test it out first.

In some cases, you can test out a decision before actually making it. Consider visiting a new city to see how it feels to you, before taking that job that would require you to relocate. Or see if you can chat with any of your potential new coworkers ahead of time. In those moments when you’re exposing yourself to a new experience, your body tends to signal to you whether an unfamiliar situation “feels right” or “feels off.”

13. Know when not to decide.

In some situations, your ability to make good decisions is compromised, such as when you’re in a hurry, prideful, angry, lonely, rejected, inebriated, or tired, says Whitaker. “Successful people know when they’re not in a good place to make a decision, and they say, ‘Let me sleep on that,’ or ‘Let me think about that. I’ll get back to you,’” he says. “They’re okay with not giving answers. They defer until they know their mind’s right.”

Making a decision when you’re not in the right frame of mind leads to consequences, and “consequences pile up and turn into regret,” says Whitaker.

14. Talk to yourself in the third person.

It can temporarily improve your decision-making and actually drive long-term benefits to thinking and emotional regulation. Adopting an outsider’s perspective can help you identify and accept the limits of your understanding of a problem.

If you’re weighing whether to change jobs, for instance, the distance can help you consider the risks and benefits of that job switch a little bit less passionately.

15. Weed out the shoulds.

Brownstone noted how often decision-making is loaded with shoulds. You may feel you should do something because it makes you more money, or because someone expects it of you (peer pressure!). “Indecisiveness almost always occurs because of shoulds crowding the room,” she wrote.

16. Listen to your hopes.

When you’re really struggling with a decision, it’s often because your mind thinks one thing is practical while your heart wants something else. Pay attention to what you hope will happen.

For example, when you ask a mentor for advice, what are you hoping they’ll tell you? Or if you had to make a decision based on a coin toss, which side would you hope it lands on? We’re not purely rational creatures who make completely rational decisions. It’s right (and good!) to listen to your hopes because they often give you deeper insight into the decisions you actually want to make, which means you can make better decisions for you.

17. Put a deadline on your thoughts.

To avoid endless circles of mulling a choice, give yourself a deadline, Morin advised. If it’s a small decision, promise yourself you’ll decide within a couple of hours. If it’s a big decision, you might give yourself several days or even a couple weeks.

This way, you’re giving yourself time to think deeply about important issues. But by having a deadline, you’re not allowing procrastination to take hold.  

18. Fall back on your values.

Having clear values that you try to live by can make tough decisions easier. For example, maybe you know there’s a certain amount of time you want to spend with your family, or a baseline level of debt you’re willing to carry. When it comes time to a decision about embarking on more work travel, taking a new job with a long commute, or making a big purchase, you’ll immediately recognize whether choosing a certain course of action would violate one of those values or guide rules.

19. Course correct if needed.

A good decision maker can course correct quickly, says Whitaker. “When successful people have enough evidence that they’ve made a bad decision, they don’t look for more,” he says. “They’re willing to shut down a business, for example, and go in a different direction.” They fail fast and fix fast, he says, and then move on.

The key is to always revert back to your goals. “I call it the big reset,” says Whitaker. “Everyone is walking with mistakes they’ve made, and almost everyone has made a poor decision on a big category.”

The worst reaction is what Whitaker calls “goal grooming,” adjusting your goals downward to fit your current circumstances. “We do it to avoid feeling bad about the missing mark,” he says. “We say, ‘Well I didn’t want that job anyway.’ Goal grooming is a bad thing to do for the future. Successful people keep goals solid and reverent, and then continue to make decisions purposefully around them.”

20. Recognize that nothing is perfect.

Remember that no one has a crystal ball for the future. But if you spend the present moment worrying about and overthinking what the future holds, you’ll waste precious time today. Once you’ve made a decision, own it and accept that it was the best you could do. 

Elizabeth Grace Saunders, Stephanie Vozza, Katarina Berg, and Tomas Chamorro Premuzik also contributed writing, reporting, and/or advice to this article.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For more than two decades, Jennifer Alsever has contributed to such publications as Fortune Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Wired Magazine, and Fast Company. More


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