Making Decisions

Everyone makes decisions. They range in importance, but the fact is that they are unavoidable if you want to participate in your community, society at large, and life in general. The steps outlined below are followed explicitly for larger decisions that take deliberation and time to reach reasonable conclusions, but they also apply on a more instinctive basis for less important choices. That is to say, I am basically following these steps on a subconscious level for every decision, no matter how mundane.

1. Set a Deadline

Make sure you know when you need to come up with a deliberation. If the choice you are working with is a significant one, the deadline should be set sufficiently far into the future to allow for enough processing time, but not too far in the future that you decide to put off the next steps in actually making the decision.

2. Gather as Much Information as Possible

Now that you know you have until your deadline to make the decision, you are temporarily relieved of the responsibility of making the choice. Your only concern now should be researching and thinking about the possible options available.

I maintain that more information about possible options is always better. This will undoubtedly lead to ‘analysis paralysis’ if you forget that you don’t actually have to make a decision at this point. You are just enumerating the possibilities as well as assessing their feasibility and desirability. This is the stage in the process requiring objectivity. Different options pertaining to the decision you are trying to reach must be evaluated based on the facts surrounding them, not the feelings associated (the emotional aspect of decisions is certainly necessary, but that comes later).

3. Decide

Once the deadline hits, information gathering MUST CEASE. If you don’t stop gathering information, you will stress out and be unable to make a decision. Continuing to worry about the information of all the options after you’ve made a decision will be detrimental to your satisfaction and can hold you back from further progress. At the point of deciding it will be necessary to consider emotional factors that were previously unimportant to your analysis. If two options are objectively acceptable choices, you should consult your emotional reaction to each idea. The choice that would contribute more to emotional well-being (happiness, stability, comfort level, potential for character growth, etc.) is very likely the better option.

4. Accept your Choice and Move on

It is rare that decisions are permanently detrimental. If you’ve made a poor choice you should remember that you were working with time constraints and incomplete information (as is true of EVERY decision anyone has ever made). It is unrealistic to expect perfection in decisions. It is quite reasonable however, to choose after the fact to work with the decision you did make in order to maximize the utility of the outcome. It may not be a perfect decision, but it certainly allowed you to advance to a point in your life that provides you with other decisions to make. Just keep making decisions as best as possible in the hopes that you can steer the outcomes in a desirable direction.