The Secret to Effective, Efficient Decision-Making

Time to read: a wee bit over one minute

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I've been hearing from lots of people about big decisions they are making this week. Decision making can be daunting. It can produce anxiety and fear. You feel the risk of making the wrong decision and then facing the consequences forever.

See what you think of this common decision-making process:

  1. Gather all the information.
  2. Think about the information.
  3. Make a list of pros and cons to assess each option and determine which one is the best choice.
  4. Think more.
  5. Organize the information.
  6. Try to get more information.
  7. Look for more pros and cons, hoping to find the one that will make everything clear.
  8. Feel muddled and foggy and not sure what to do.
  9. Repeat steps 4 - 8 until you can't sleep.

Sound familiar? You go round and round, stressing out, and getting no closer to clarity until you make the decision through force or exhaustion.

This process is not effective and doesn't produce better results.

Gathering information is fine. The thinking bit is fine. Making a pros and cons list is fine too, but in many cases, it isn't actually going to help you make your decision. There's a point where no additional information is going to make the choice.

So, what's the secret to easier, more effective decision-making?

Here is everything you need to know to move you from muddled to clarity:

The secret: Leverage other ways of knowing. (I put this in bold in case you scrolled right to it.)

You have wisdom that goes beyond the facts and data, and here's how to access that wisdom:

  • Feel your feelings. Do you feel excited or defeated? Do you feel happy or trapped? Are you bored or full of possibility?
  • Listen to your intuition. Are you getting messages that say go or messages that scream "stop!" Does the door feel open or closed? Where do things feel ease-ful or hard?

This requires you to be very honest with yourself and sometimes to make decisions that don't make logical sense. (Remember when I told you I didn't publish a book even though a publisher went out of their way to talk to me? The decision to not publish didn't make logical sense from the standpoint of what I should do. And everything in me screamed, "no!")

You can use this tip for big decisions like which job to take or for small ones like what to do for dinner. The more you practice, the faster and clearer your decisions will become.

I hope this helps!

Christina

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