Decisions shape our lives, but what happens when they're tough to make? Unravel the art of decision-making, where we delve into strategies and psychological insights that can guide you through the labyrinth of difficult choices.
Avoiding a decision is in fact a decision
It’s tempting but unwise to delay important choices. Grasp the nettle by using both systematic checklists and gut instinct
- Decisions are complex because human beings are complex.
- When faced with a difficult decision, it can be tempting to take the easy road and procrastinate
- In fact, procrastination is not the refusal to decide, or to ‘freeze’ a decision in time, rather it is the active decision to remain undecided
How to make difficult decisions under pressure
Under stress, we tend to behave as if we are under time pressure even when we’re not
- Pressure leads people to adopt a narrow vision of the situation at hand
- Cognitive tunnelling: We tend to focus all our attention on the decision and ignore peripheral information, which may be vital
- Good decision-makers judge when further delay will end up costing more than any decision they take
- Make sure that your decision will not be driven by a fear of missing out
- Ensure that you will not reject a promising candidate solely based on feelings of pride
- Ask yourself the following five questions: Why are we taking this decision? What do we think will happen if we do? Is the benefit of this decision proportional to the risk? Do we have a common understanding and position on the situation?
Links & Books
The Art of Decision Making (2019) explores the deeper roots of our indecision and provides a step-by-step guide to improving our ability to decide, as well as improving the quality of our decisions
- Joseph Badaracco, professor of business ethics at Harvard Business School, has formulated five questions that can help us shed new light on our most challenging choices
- How to Think Like a Phenician
- Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological reduction will transform your view of the world and your own consciousness
What to do
Identify the parts of yourself that want different things
- Create distance from the decision
- Psychological distance provides a sense of perspective that is a key component of effective decision-making
- Adopt a childlike mindset
- Think outside the box
- If you are confronted with two or three options and you’re struggling to decide, what you might be missing is that there is at least one more creative option available to you
How to make a difficult decision
Avoiding a decision is in fact a decision.
- Identify the parts of yourself that want different things, and try to find a compromise between them
- Create distance from the decision – think outside the box
- List out your objectives
- Listen to your emotions
- Use micro-decisions to overcome inertia
- Writing about options can help
