Useful Guide To Smarter Decision Making

Making decisions in your life, whether it's what to eat for lunch or where to find your next job, can seem overwhelming. Each choice carries with it a result and a chain of events that may dictate the course of your life. For those who consider every decision as life or death, day-to-day choices can seem impossible! To help you discover the finer points of decision-making, here are some valuable tips on how you can make smart decisions that you can live with every day.

1Plan Your Decision

Start by evaluating the decision to be made. What are the details? By mapping out exactly what your choice will entail as far as consequences and results, you'll be on your way to making an informed decision that you can live with.

2Consider The Pros And Cons

This process is tried and true. Make a list and evaluate the pros in one column against the cons in another. Include short-term and long-term consequences as well as the positives and negatives. Seeing the pros and cons before you on paper will make the matter at hand seem all the more evident as far as how you should make your decision.

In your evaluation, give more weight to the pros and cons that carry more weight in your life. The number of pros or cons does not equal quality. For example, if one of your main priorities in life is to make more money, listing "make more money" on your pros column should count for more than one of the cons in the other column.

3Evaluate Your Motives

While making your list of pros and cons, consider what motives may be contributing to the points you added in both columns. Revise or weigh accordingly. For example, can the con on your list be attributed to your lifelong fear, or is it merely situational? In this case, perhaps facing your worries should be part of the decision. Thus, facing this fear may be a pro as opposed to being a con.

4Gather Information And Be Well-Informed

When making smart decisions, it is to your best advantage to gather relevant information. Find out all of the related information you need to make your decision. Being better informed through research or talking to others will help you make a decision you can live with.

5Set A Deadline To Make The Decision

When faced with an important decision, many people tend to delay making the ultimate choice. A deadline helps you to focus on the decision rather than having your thoughts wander and getting distracted. By giving yourself a time limit, you will have no other choice than to decide one way or another.

6Look At The Bigger Picture

Is this a small or large decision in the course of your life? Decide which and evaluate accordingly. If it's small, perhaps you're spending too much time and consideration on it. If it's larger, how will it fit in with the rest of your life goals? By examining the decision for what it is in the short and long term, you will better understand how the decision affects the bigger picture.

7Recognize The Relativity

Many tough decisions can carry with them a number of consequences, but more often than not, there is always more time and more opportunity to make the decision again. Worrying needlessly about one decision is futile. Most decisions only determine your short-term circumstances in the relative present. In most cases, your choice can be altered in the future when situations are different, or you're in a different stage of your life.

Every day, you have to make small and big decisions that can inevitably stress you out. Following these tips can transform decision-making from a stressful process into a process that gives you more confidence and control in your life. Embrace decisions as the good thing that it is, and the result will be a happier, more confident you!

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