What’s the biggest mistake you can make when there’s a tough, tough decision to face?
Clue—it’s not picking the wrong option. In reality, what makes you struggle is exactly this fear you’re going to buy a house too big for your wallet, marry a person not perfect for you, or enter a career at odds with your personality traits.
By the end of the article, you’ll be able to vaporize these concerns and choose among difficult options at speed-light!
Learning How to Make Tough Decisions with Ease Is Simple as Abc
You make choices between equally attractive options in everyday situations. The kind of “pizza, soup, or salad for lunch break?”. Of course, I go for pizza. After soup and before salad—you know, choosing costs more energies than chewing and I’m a low-energy person…
Anyway, when it comes to rarer life-changing decisions, the worry of messing up things can freeze your willpower.
If you’re really slowing off the mark with your decision-making, here are 4 steps to speed it up.
Step #1: Identify the problem first
Before even approaching a decision, you must first completely understand the issue in question.
To look at it from multiple perspectives, take a step back and consider the situation objectively. Next, in order to trace the problem back to its deepest root cause, follow the 5 Whys technique: ask yourself 5 times why it occurred—dig deeper at any answer.
Step #2: Generate alternative solutions
Once you’ve identified the dilemma, drop down a list of solutions.
Try the incredible tool to ignite your free-thinking that is mind mapping. Ask for other people’s input, too, and don’t discard even the seemingly worst ideas, they might inspire better ones.
Step #3: Evaluate your options
Now that you’ve gathered all thinkable choices, shortlist the best five or so.
Then, weigh up the risks and picture what the impact of each possibility will look like in one year’s time. Listen to your guts. After all, your instinct might still be the best compass to decide whether to move to your mother in law or keep on donating every salary to your landlord’s pension fund.
Step #4: Select the best decision
Decisions are hard work and, at this point, you must feel exhausted.
So, take a 24h break and let all stew at slow heat. After this ‘cooling off’ period, pick out the alternative which makes the most sense to you; if it still looks rosy—go for it.
“Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to keep things simple.” ~ Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group
Sitting on 5 billion USD(2016), Sir Branson might teach us one thing or two about the danger of overcomplicating things. So, make these four easy guidelines habit and increase the number of good decisions you pick.
To get it even easier, use the graphic above by On Stride Financial as a quick reference.
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