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You are here: Home / Making Good Decisions / How to Make Decisions

How to Make Decisions

June 10, 2009 by Cathy Stucker 4 Comments

decisionsMany of our worries arise from our postponement of decisions. Don’t vacillate. It is better to make a wrong choice than to tear yourself apart making and unmaking the same decision.

Where there is indecision, there are doubts. Where there are doubts, you have conflict. Where you have conflict, you have symptoms. The longer your indecisiveness lasts, the more difficult the problem seems to become. If you vacillate long enough, your state of anxiety can become chronic.

There is no recipe for infallibility. The trouble with most of us is that we want some sure-fire recipe for being right 100 per cent of the time. There is no such recipe.

A successful business executive once said that the difference between success and failure lay in being right 52 per cent of the time, instead of 48 per cent of the time.

In nearly every business decision someone must have the courage to take positive action without having in hand all the facts and data to make that decision risk-free. To wait for all the necessary information may mean missing an opportunity, may mean a more aggressive competitor will take the important initiative, may mean a timing failure. Timing in business affairs is vital. So usually someone, a manager with courage, must stick his neck out and decide to do something—now!

The amount of time you take to make a decision should be based on its importance. “Will my decision make any difference in my life a year from now?” is a hackneyed question. Still, the amount of time and thought you should devote to the decision will be affected by the answer.

Don’t waste too much time on trifling decisions. Probably it will make no difference a year from now whether you wear your blue suit or your gray one. If you’re wasting time over that decision, you may be running away from a more important one.

Write down advantages and disadvantages of important decisions. If you have a fairly important decision to make, get all the facts you can that have a bearing on it. Then get a sheet of paper and draw a line down the center. On the left side, write the reasons in favor of the step you are thinking of taking. On the right side, list the reasons against it.

You might even assign a figure from one to ten for each reason, giving your estimate of the importance of that factor. If you find your reasons for taking a particular step add up to 80, and the reasons against it to 110, you have a clear mathematical picture of what you ought to do.

Then “sleep on it.” The unconscious mind is able to evaluate factors that the conscious mind sometimes skips. So sleep on your decision. Let the unconscious mind pass along its answer to your conscious mind.

At times the decisions of the unconscious mind represent clearer and sounder thinking than you can produce with your everyday conscious mind. Accept the guidance of your unconscious mind for cues to your best course of action.

Most importantly, make a decision. Not only will failing to make a decision cause anxiety, failing to make a decision is itself a decision. If you do not decide to start a blog, or join Toastmasters, or take some other action, you are deciding not to do those things.

Take stock, list the pros and cons, tap into your subconscious, then make a decision and act on it.

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Related Posts :

What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do
How to Make a Decision

Filed Under: Making Good Decisions Tagged With: decision, decision making, decisions

Comments

  1. Melodee Patterson says

    June 11, 2009 at 10:33 am

    Making any decision helps to tell me if I made the right one. If after making a decision, I feel good, it’s probably the right decision. If I feel “uncomfortable” in some way, I know I need to reassess the decision 🙂

    Reply
  2. Katherine Swarts says

    June 15, 2009 at 10:14 am

    Those first three paragraphs sound like me, all right. A quote I just made up goes: Most people are so afraid of doing the wrong thing that they prefer to do nothing–and never consider that “nothing” may itself be a very wrong thing to do.

    Reply
  3. Scott says

    June 24, 2009 at 8:45 am

    One thing to consider for major decisions or life changing ones is can I limit the impact? Stage gate processes were developed by companies to help them control risk on major projects such as getting into new markets or developing new products.

    Can your decision be broken down into more steps? Can you limit the impact each step makes and verify the results before risking more?

    When you can’t limit the risk, understand it. What is the worst thing that could happen? Can you accept that and live through it. If so and the data and feelings lean towards making the decision, burn the boats and commit to it fully.

    There are lots of information out there that highly successful people make decisions quickly and have developed the skill of making good decisions on more limited information than other people.

    Success is driven by failing quickly. Make a decision, execute it, determine if it was a good one, wash rinse and repeat.

    Reply
  4. Bob says

    July 12, 2009 at 6:28 pm

    After the start of my career I grew and went higher on the ladder in business and developing people. The higher on the ladder the more and more important decisions, and the greater impact they had on the business and on the people. In decision making I gathered the information relevant to it, evaluated it and made a rather quick decision and moved on. For younger managers the biggest problem is fear of the consequences of their decision, it may be wrong or be right. They need to make the decision and move on, learn from it, and make the next one even better. Encourage younger managers to make their decisions, encourage when they are good and coach when they are not. Keep things moving by making some decision rather than sitting on the fence evaluating endlessly, etc., etc.

    Reply

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