9 keys to make intelligent decisions
Are you one of those who take a little time each day to decide what clothes to wear? When you stay with a friend to drink something, do you always leave the responsibility to the other to choose the site? Is going to a free buffet a hell because it overwhelms you so much food to choose? Well, keep reading because what I'm going to tell you interests you.
With this article I intend to help you learn to make intelligent decisions and end the bad habit of indecision to be at peace and satisfied with your life.
- Related article: "The 8 types of decisions"
Improve when making decisions
Notice that one of the things we do most in our day to day is to make decisions. Since you get up until you go to bed. And your life is a direct consequence of all of them.
When we think about making decisions, we usually think about big and far-reaching decisions like studying philosophy or mathematics, or marrying or not marrying my boyfriend, etc. But throughout the day we take many others. Eat toast or cereal, go to work by bus or walk, etc ... And on many occasions, what marks the differences are these small decisions .
Common mistakes when making decisions
Part of the ineffectiveness in making decisions has to do with the habit of not knowing how to recognize a series of errors . The main ones are the following.
1. Focus on what you reject
Do not look at what you stop winning, what in economics is known as the opportunity cost, but what you can earn if you choose that option . In this way you will not fall into the dreaded paralysis of the analysis, which is neither more nor less than not taking any decision for excessive analysis.
2. Delaying decision making
We become procrastinators. We leave for later what we should decide already. If you wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything, you have it ready, you have it clear and there is no risk or uncertainty, you will never make a decision. To avoid this error, Set a deadline for the resolution and complete it .
- Related article: "Procrastination or the syndrome of" I'll do it tomorrow ": what it is and how to prevent it"
3. Being afraid of being wrong
The error is part of the success process. Successful people are very wrong . What happens is that they are wrong early, young, cheap and only once in each thing. That's the idea. You will be wrong, yes or yes. And those mistakes will be great teachers for you. Therefore, he loses the fear of error.
Before continuing, I would like you to write a question on a piece of paper about which you have to make a decision. I want this article to be as useful as possible and to serve you for at least the most immediate doubt you have.
You already have it? Let's go for it!
Suggestions for making good decisions
To improve your decision-making ability, follow these guidelines.
1. Establish what is priority and secondary in your life
The first goes before. And often the first thing we do not put before making a decision. And we make decisions based on the secondary objectives of our life.
I recommend you do a list of the most important things in your life . 5 things And rate them from 1 to 5, according to their importance. And when you have to make a decision, ask yourself how it affects these 5 things. By order. If you favor them you will be making the right decision, if you do not favor them you will be making the wrong decision.
2. Implanta firewall
Firebreaks will be limits that you will not go through when making decisions. Or what is the same, you make the decision, before making the decision. With this you avoid making the decision in hot or letting yourself be carried away by emotions. A) Yes, you protect yourself .
Example: Go to a job interview knowing that less than X money, more than X hours or less of X responsibility, I will not, I will not accept it.
3. If you have made a bad decision, let it go
Skip as soon as possible. Life is too short to insist on things that do not bring you anything . Sometimes we make a wrong decision and hope it changes. We are obstinate. And I will tell you something, every day that goes by, how you have invested more, in time, in money, in resources, emotionally, every day it costs you more to make mistakes.
This applies to both a book that you have started to read and do not like, a course that is not what you expected or a relationship that does not fill you.
4. Accept the worst possible scenario
Assess what is the worst possible scenario, real, to make the decision. I clarify that it must be real, because neither should we dramatize thinking you're going to end up under a bridge. And as I said it is important, because if you are prepared for the worst possible scenario, you accept it and you can face it, then you do not have to be afraid to make that decision.
5. Simplify and stay with 2-3 alternatives
Instead of thinking among 50 possible options, try to reduce them as much as possible to 2-3. The fewer options we have, the less our mind will disperse and therefore we will make better decisions.
6. Use the "hot coffee" technique
If you get a coffee at the table very hot, what do you do? Wait, let it cool for a few minutes and then you take it. Well, with the decisions that seem urgent we can do the same .
Example: A co-worker comes to you and tells you that you have to decide the date of the vacation already or your wife asks if you want to go shopping with her. Do not make the decision in hot, wait a bit, cool and take it.
Mind you, be careful and do not get so cold that you become a procrastinator.
7. Make the decision when you go into action
Action is the bridge that unites thoughts with results. So in any decision, the process ends not when we think about it , but when we go into action.
8. Trust your intuition and creative ideas
People think that people who make decisions in a rational and thoughtful way are not usually driven by instinct. Intuition is that thought, that feeling that is in an unconscious plane and that gives you different vibrations according to what you think.
On the other hand, according to studies on people who, due to work, have to be continually making decisions, more than 49% are guided by intuition . They say that intuition is trained. As you are taking more and more decisions, your intuition is refined. And they dare to have creative ideas. Whereupon taking wise ideas is not at odds with being carried away by intuition.
9. Keep silent
It is difficult to make good decisions in our frantic day to day; from one side to another, in the car, surrounded by people and noise. It is very easy to stop making decisions for having to do things. A moment of silence is the best that can come for taking decisions.
A while in total silence. Go to the park, to the beach or find yourself a place where you can be quiet alone and in which nobody bothers you. No wi-fi, no phone, no clock.
It is time to take the role of before, with the decision that you did not know how to take and apply some of these techniques. You do not have to apply them all at once. Stay with the ones that you like or believe that best suit your case.
I only have to thank you for coming here and I hope that all this information that I have given you will be useful. If you dare, I'll wait for you in the comments and in the networks.
- You may be interested: "Why is it so hard for us to make some decisions?"
