The Art of making a good and perfect decision
There are so many choices these days. Life is full of choices. We have to choose not only good but best. We make choices every minute of our life. It can be hard or difficult. Walk though any store, look at any magazine. We will see a lot choices in front of you. Even through now a day, your email offers a thousand of ads. We make a choice. What to choose?
Some choices are e easy as what we will going to eat at dinner and others are very difficult like which career you are going to pursue.
As a single person, you have no choice but to make choices. They will be difficult but they have to be. This is a new reality for us.
It doesn’t matter where we live or what we’re doing. You can either do good things or bad things. You can follow your passion or follow your passion. You decide.
Some people are happy with whatever life throws at them. You have the choice now of where you are going to be. Some people are going to make good choices and others are going to make a bad choice. It doesn’t matter.
What is decision making?
According to Wikipedia: decision making is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several alternatives. Every decision making the process a final choice, which may or may not promote action.
Why we make a poor decision?
We all take the decision in everyday life. We are all sometimes irrational. For a long time researcher and economist found that humans made logical, well-considered. In recent times, researchers have uncovered a wide range of mental error that detail our thinking. Sometimes we go wrong but what to do about it?
There are five common errors that stuck you from good decision making. These are:
- Survivor ship bias.
- Loss of aversion.
- The availability heuristic
- Anchoring
- Confirmation bias
When we tend to overestimate the importance of events we can easily recall and underestimate the importance of events we have trouble. These errors can be deducted when we find a way to make your present self, act in the best interest of your future self.
How do you make a perfect decision?
The real key to making a perfect decision is to understand that you are trying to make a decision about your life, your future and your future plans. Just like how you make the decision to go to the hospital or buy a car and make your own decisions about the choices you make and the choices you make the decisions are not your own.
It would be like saying, “I am just going to get a job at McDonald’s so my mom will spend the rest of her life with me”. Or, I am going to go to school to get a certificate to be a pilot; I am going out to start a family and we are going to have a house and all these amazing things.
These are not necessarily your own choices. There is a big difference here between a “choice” and a “decision”. All you need to know is the decision which you are making and it does not matter if you just “choose” to get married, go to school, get married, buy a car, get a certificate, get your house,
Tips to make a smarter decision:
1. Take your time:
Clear and logical thinking takes time too. If you are in some pressure or think under some deadline issues. The process of fast thinking takes place which can affect your decision making power. When are in the rush we jump into a quick conclusion that the decision will be full of hunches and biases, rather than carefully thinking on facts, figures and information. Complex decision takes time, so take your time before making any important decision.
However, quick thinking can be helpful in the small business or everyday business which does not require much deliberation.
2. Gather the facts:
A decision will be good if your information is great. When you are taking for the decision making utilize it carefully for gathering the correct information. We can ponder a choice for an hour, but if the information we mull over is very limited, or of poor quality, then all the effort and thought will be much less effective. The more reliable our information will be the more we ignore the uncertain or the poor quality decision.
3. Stay open to all possibilities:
Quick thinking has several different outcomes, not all of them may be as we think about. Consider each option not just positive or negative, write down all consequences which are possible.
4. Think about the pros and cons:
Sometimes the situation arrives, we take some big decisions and we can’t properly imagine the big or truer picture of it. Write a list of the pros and con and then compare them all. And decide what to do and how to do? So it will give you a little push to take some right action. Maybe the cons are not really as bad as we think or pros might make your options more obvious.
5. Talk about it:
Talking about anything is better. As a famous saying: “two heads are better than one”. Take another person’s perception on your issue so, you get the idea about the other person thinking.
6. Keep a diary:
Track your feelings by writing it down. Of course, not all decisions are easy. It’s an art of taking a decision. Sometimes, you have to take some emotional decisions and your feelings are not in your control. Tame it through your writing skills.
7. Create rules:
Even the best decision-makers are still human. We all sometimes face the situation when we feel stressed, emotional, depressed, unmotivated, rushed but still, you have to gather all facts and information carefully. Thinking about every decision may be impossible in our daily life. Effective decision makers make some rules and formulas to make some smart choice.
- The rule of not being emotional (be rational not emotional)
- The rule of not biased toward anything.
- The rule stays away from favouritism.
- The rule of not follows wrong, even if everyone doing it.
- The rule of stick toward the plan.
8. Plan how you’ll tell others:
If you think about your decision will not be motivated by others, think about their decisions before. Think what their reactions will be. Put yourself into their positions, so you will have some idea how they respond and then prepare yourself accordingly.
9. Avoid decision fatigue:
Decision fatigue spas focus and reduce energy. Hundreds of trivial daily decisions degrade our ability to focus. Avoid any kind of fatigue. Embrace the truth of life and go ahead with it.
10. Rethink about the decision
If you are personally not satisfied with your own decision than you can rethink your decision. Sometimes we took decision under some pressure so if there are other factors, you can consider than go with it. You might decide the original one was better than stick on it. If you think it won’t right then go through all the above steps again and figure out the better one.