There’s no denying that almost everything you do in life involves making a decision. For instance, you can either choose to wake up as soon as your morning alarm sounds or keep “on snooze” mode, so you can sleep twenty or thirty minutes longer. The latter is often a consequence of choices you might have made the previous night that caused you to go to bed later than usual or struggle to fall asleep. Similarly, you could either order a pizza or decide to keep it healthy with grilled chicken when you have to eat out.
Sometimes it’s just a self-debate on which pair of shoes to pick or which car to choose at the yard. Choices always have consequences, but not all decisions are as simple as the classical examples above. In the workplace, for example, you have to be extra thoughtful before making decisions involving hiring, firing, and promotion. You might experience a similar kind of quagmire before making a decision involving your relationships, career change, business deals, legal issues, and pretty much anything that affects your life in a major way.
Huge decisions are often the toughest to make. They can put a strain on you mentally, emotionally, and even financially because you may need expert advice to get it right. Sometimes you just can’t help but delay the process, postpone decision-making, or plunge into procrastination, leading to poor and regrettable choices in the near or far future. Nonetheless, decision-making doesn’t have to make your life harder than it probably is already.
As a person or a business or otherwise, below are a few tips on how to ensure decision-making is easy while avoiding reluctance.
1. Utilize Technology
The list of ways modern technology makes human life easier is inarguably endless. If you’re reading this, modern tech is actually making your life easier, perhaps even that of the author. With this being said, there are several tools you can utilize to ease your decision-making process.
In most cases, the best tool to use will depend on the situation at hand or the decision that needs making. When making an important yet confusing social decision, the yes or no random picker wheel can help you make a decision fast and avoid anxiety-driven delays. Just feed some information on the wheel and spin to get the results you would have if you were playing slots. The wheel comes in handy in a myriad of situations, especially scenarios where your mind says go but your heart says stay. Some of these may include when debating with yourself whether:
● To ask someone out or not
● Go out for dinner
● Cut your hair or not
● Buy something or walk away
● Kiss her or not
2. Understand the Power of Process
Some of the best decisions take time. They require involving individuals other than you for insights, opinions, reports, and findings. Others actually need a wealth of research and data analysis to effectuate. This is quite common in cross-cutting decisions that revolve around things like sales, operations, pricing, and new product launches, just to name a few scenarios. This is why successful business organizations usually take their time to brainstorm, research, survey, and analyze before making a big decision. With concrete guiding data and facts in your hands or mind, you will not have the excuse to put decision-making on ice. You won’t even afford to risk it, especially if the decision could impact your company’s profitability, brand reputation, competitiveness, and ultimate growth.
In a nutshell, decisions are just part of a process. The final outcome depends on the ultimate decision as much as it depends on the steps taken to arrive at it. This is why successful organizations create a team of selected members with defined roles when kick-starting the process. They also set specific objectives, rules, and measures, as well as targets and realistic timelines within which a concrete decision should be made. All in all, a defined process that every stakeholder understands and believes in can help promote decision-making and reduce reluctance.
3. Your Gut Feeling May Help
Decisions have the best outcomes when an analysis is done, and the pros are weighed against the cons and those of alternatives. However, some decisions need you to act in a flash, and it’s all or nothing. These are common on the roads, for instance, where a split-second decision could save or cost lives. Another common scenario is witnessed in the stock market, where a few seconds could separate a wise investment decision from a silly blunder.
In most of these cases, the outcome of your decision may depend on your alertness, competency, and aggressiveness, among other qualities. However, none of these will matter more than your gut feeling when making a split-second decision that you will not regret. If you’re one of the many people who make great choices while under pressure, your gut instincts can come in handy even in the direst situations. However, instincts tend to apply best when making less emotive choices.
4. Delegate Decision Making Tasks
If you run a business, you do not have to make all the decisions just because you own it. For instance, do you really have to decide what your employees take for lunch each week? As long as you have a trusted HR team, you may not even have to be involved in decisions about who gets hired and who doesn’t. The same case applies when you outsource a service to an external team. As long as they keep you updated and act within the contract specifications, the delegates go a long way in easing your decision-making responsibilities.
Do you find it challenging to make some decisions surrounding your life or work? Are you sometimes hesitant to make certain crucial decisions? If so, you are not alone. So many people procrastinate decision-making until it’s too late, whereas others make bad choices they later come to regret. Thankfully, the above few points can help reduce your worries of reluctance and hardship when making decisions that matter in life or business.
Featured image: Pexels (Andrea Piacquadio).
