10 Tips for making better decisions.
Posted on September 27, 2022 by Deborah Skriloff, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
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A good life is the result of wise decisions. A life filled with negative consequences is the result of poor decisions. It might be impossible to make good decisions every time, but you can significantly raise your odds!
Do you have a decision-making process, or do you fly by the seat of your pants? Given that you’ve made a lot of good and bad decisions over the years, you can use those to your benefit and enhance your decision-making process.
Most people don’t have a defined process for making decisions. This is unfortunate. Consider how your life has been affected by your best and worst decisions.
Learn how to make a great decision and your life will grow in wonderful ways.
Use these strategies to sharpen your decision-making skills:
Know your desired outcome. What are you trying to accomplish? When you know what you want, the solution becomes clearer. What is the point of considering a given option? Is it to maximize your income? Enhance your health? Find a spouse? Hire the most reasonable cleaning service you can find? Define what you’re attempting to accomplish.
Be rational while making a decision. Most decisions made under duress aren’t the best decisions. You’re don’t think as clearly when you’re stressed, tired, or uncomfortable in any way. When you’re not at your best, your choices will likely consider your immediate comfort more than they should.
Keep the long-term in mind. Consider how your decision will affect your life in weeks, months, or even years down the road. What will you gain and sacrifice in the long-term? Decisions made with an emphasis on the short-term often ruin your life down the road.
Know how you’d handle the worst possible outcome. When you know that you can handle the worst, it’s easier to make up your mind and get on with your life. Think about everything that could go wrong and determine how you would handle it.
Take enough time to make a good decision, but not longer. Some decisions take longer than others but avoid allowing yourself to be paralyzed by a decision. Procrastinating won’t enable you to make a better choice. Ask yourself what you hope to gain by waiting. If there’s no benefit, make a decision and move forward.
Use your past experience. What can you use from your past to help you make a wise decision now? All of your previous good and bad decisions are resources you can call upon now.
Can you trust yourself to follow through? A good decision that you can’t complete is no better than a poor decision or no decision at all. Sometimes the solution with the best likely outcome is too challenging to implement. Do you have the skills and the stamina to follow through?
Get assistance from an expert. If you don’t know enough to make a good decision, get the help you need. There are so many people in the world that one of them is certain to have the expertise you need to make a great decision.
Take action immediately. After making a decision, it’s important to do something about it. You’ve made many decisions in the past that you never acted upon. Make it a habit to take at least a small step that supports your decision.
Know your values. When you know your values, your available options shrink. This makes it easier to choose. What’s most important to you? How does the decision you need to make relate to those values?
Making better decisions is one of the best ways to enhance your life. A poor decision isn’t generally fatal, but it can be challenging to recover from.
A great life is the result of a steady stream of great decisions. Develop your own step-by-step process for making wise decisions. Leverage your past and a long-term perspective to choose more wisely in the future.
