Self

Decision Making Habits You Should Adopt For A Successful Life

Decision Making can be easy when you have all the facts, experience, and know what to do ahead.

But it is not possible to bump into those situation at every point of your life.

It is not possible to always be backed up by logic, data and experience.

Therefore, when these situation arises in life, you need to have guts for good decision making process.

Believe it or not, knowing how to make good decisions could be the key to living your best life.

On top of it, being able to make those decision in timely manner and feeling confident about your decision is the best.

Fortunately, everyone can take steps to become better decision makers.

Therefore, if you want to become a better decision maker in your life, we have got some tips that you can incorporate.

Take Note of Overconfidence

Believe it or not, overconfidence can easily make your judgment go awry.

Studies consistently show people who tend to overestimate their performance end up making bad decisions.

For instance, you are ninety percent sure you are going to do well in your presentation.

Or maybe you are eighty percent sure you can convince your boss to give you a promotion.

However, if you act overconfident in this matter, your plans and all the decision you have made for yourself can go wrong.

It’s especially important to consider your confidence level in terms of time management.

Most people overestimate how much they can accomplish in a certain period of time.

But, things doesn’t always happens exactly what we want and life isn’t that easy.

To achieve your goal you might have to change hundreds of plans and make thousands of decisions.

Especially, in the business world, if you are overconfident about your decisions, you will always get stuck behind.

Therefore, you need to take time every day to estimate the likelihood that you’ll be successful.

Good decision makers recognize areas in their lives where overconfidence could be a problem.

Then, they adjust their thinking and behavior accordingly to make things work.

So, are you a good enough in your own decision making process? Think about it.

Identify the Risks You Take

There’s a good chance you make some poor decisions simply because you’ve grown familiar to your habits.

In that case, you do not think about the danger you will get into and later can cause you harm.

For example, you might have a habit of speeding your car on the way home.

Each time you arrive safely without a speeding ticket, you become a little more comfortable with driving fast.

This becomes your daily habit and you do not get worried about changing your decisions.

However, you’re jeopardizing your safety and taking a legal risk here.

This is all about your personal life, however, it is kind of similar while doing business too.

We might say that business is all about taking risk and for some part it’s true.

However, if you are not able to keep track of your risk your decision making with be worthless.

For instance, you are investing on a company just because you got a good offer.

However, if you do not have track of the market, customers or potential risk that the company will bring, how would you make decisions?

If you do not know the problems how would you come up with a solution?

Therefore, it is really essential for you in both personal and professional life to keep track of your risk for better decision making.

Stop Thinking About the Problem

Like said before, you need to know the problem before entering your decision making process.

However, it’s not likely to get so much into it that you completely ruin your life.

When you’ve faced with a tough choice, like whether to move to a new city or to invest in a business, you might spend a lot of time thinking.

And while science shows there is plenty of value in thinking about your options, and overthinking about it.

Weighing the pros and cons for too long may increase your stress level to the point that you struggle to make a decision.

Studies sows that there’s a lot of value in letting an idea incubate. Consciously thinking about the same problem may not make you a good decision maker.

Especially when it comes to decision making in business, the more you think about the problem the more time it will consume.

Therefore, you need to be quick and smart enough to make right decisions for your business.

Set Aside Time to Reflect on Your Mistakes

Whether you left your house without an umbrella and got drenched on the way to work, or blew your budget to do some purchase, set aside time to reflect on your mistakes.

Make it a daily habit to review the choices you made throughout the day whether good or bad.

When your decisions don’t turn out well, ask yourself what went wrong and try not to repeat it again.

However, do not overthink about your bad decision and feel sad about it all day.

Always look for the lesson that you can gain from each mistakes you make every day.

Dwelling for your mistakes for too long can not only make decision making process slow but even hamper your mental health.

Keep your reflection time sensitive. Perhaps ten minutes per day is enough for you to reflect all the bad decisions you made.

Then take information you’ve gained and commit to making better decisions moving forward.

Acknowledge Your Shortcuts

Let’s admit it, everyone has a habit of creating shortcuts for everything in life.

It is referred to as heuristics to help you deal with decision making process smarter and faster.

These mental shortcuts keep you from toiling for hours over every little choices you make.

For instance, if you are a manager of a big company, every activities of the company depends on your decision.

Employees wait for your decision in order to perform big tasks of the company.

Hence, as a manager you need to make a smart and quick decision in order not to make your employees wait.

Therefore, at this time you always need to create a mental shortcuts to deal with issues.

The more experienced you are the more it gets better for you in your decision making process.

However, it can also steer you wrong. For instance, if you’ve heard a lot of news about plane crashes, you may think your chance of dying in a plane crash is higher than anything.

In this case, you will make a decision not to fly on a plane until you forget about the issue.

So, making it a daily habit to consider mental shortcuts can sometimes lead to bad decisions.

Therefore, always acknowledge the correct and incorrect assumptions you make about people and event.

This will help you to make better and effective decisions for your life.

Consider the Opposite

Once you’ve decided something is true or isn’t, you’re likely to cling to that belief.

It’s a psychological principle known as belief perseverance. Therefore, it takes more compelling evidence to change your belief.

For example, you might assume you’re a bad public speaker, so you make decisions not to go for presentations.

Or you might believe you are bad at relationships, so you make decision not to go on a date.

Those beliefs that you assume are always true can sometimes lead to very bad decisions.

Henceforth, the best way to challenge your beliefs is to argue the opposite.

If you’re convinced you shouldn’t speak up in meeting, make decisions to speak.

Considering the opposite will help you breakdown unhelpful beliefs so you can look at situations in another light.

This will make your decision making process a lot reliable and smarter.

Talk to Someone You Trust

The best way for right decision making is always having a trusted person to talk with.

For instance, when faced with a tough choice, ask yourself, “What would I say to a friend who had this problem?”

In this way, you are likely to find the answer when you’re imagining yourself offering wisdom to someone else.

Talking to your trusted friend takes some of the emotions out and always help you find a way.

It will help you gain some distance from the decision and will give you an opportunity to be a little more objective.

While you make say negative things to yourself like, “This will never work”, your trusted friend will always motivate you.

However, it doesn’t have to be your friend always. It can even be your family members with whom you can talk to about your decisions.

For instance, you so badly want to invest in a stock market, but can’t make decision about the right one.

In this case, you can always take help from your family or friends who have good knowledge about stock market.

Always remember, taking suggestions from your trusted ones will do no harm in your life.

The only thing you need to do is analyze which one might be good and which one might be bad for you.

After all, it’s all part of decision making process that you’ll eventually learn someday.

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