How to make better decisions, faster!
So after last week’s look at decision-making, let’s look at how to make better decisions!
They do say that we make from 40 to 60 THOUSAND decisions a day! From the moment we open our eyes in the morning we are making decisions.
Most of those simple decisions we’ve funnelled into habits, so we don’t have to think about them. What stage you clean your teeth in your morning cycle is a habit. Maybe what you have for breakfast is always the same - a habit.
Many successful people remove as many of those 60,000 decisions from their lives as possible. They wear the exact same colours and style of clothes every day. So they don’t have to give a thought to what to wear today: it’s the same suit, the same shirt, or the same jeans and jumper.
Whatever it is, they don’t have to waste decision energy on it! And they do the same for their meals too - same thing, every day. You may think this is boring! But how much easier does it make life when you can just smoothly run from one thing to the next without having to give it a thought?
It’s all on auto-pilot, and this frees up all that decision energy to focus on things that are really important!
Now there have been studies that prove that our decision-making capabilities wane as the day goes on - to the extent that if you have a valuable decision to make, or someone else is making an important decision about you, you need to have that decision made IN THE MORNING!
It’s been shown that as the day goes on people are less and less able to make meaningful decisions - even highly trained, highly intelligent people in positions of power.
Their decision muscle goes into spasm. And rather than make a wrong decision, they make no decision - or a holding decision - they defer it till later.
Nothing moves forward!
So this is where you can make huge advances in your decision making.
Only make important decisions in the morning.
Remove as many decision opportunities from your life as possible, and replace them with habits.
And another thing to do to make this all work better is PRACTICE. Like any other skill, practice is essential! So practice on little things.
“Coffee or tea?” you’re offered.
Don’t dither!
Don’t say, “whatever you’re having”
Jump in and DECIDE.
It doesn’t really matter what you decide as long as you practice doing it. There are lots of occasions when you can practice making decisions. This is why I love working as a Transition Coach - I see people realising that they can actually achieve what they want when they learn how to make the decision they’ve been avoiding - sometimes for YEARS!
And if your decision is a really important one - which is going to determine your future for the next few years - like leaving your day job, starting a business, moving house, moving country, starting a family … then this is when you need to set a time limit on your deliberations. Get out the pen and paper, and make two columns, PRO and CON.
Pretend you’re not you. You’re someone else who isn’t directly involved. Allow that imaginary person to look dispassionately at what you have to decide, and focus you on what’s really going on.
Decide that you are going to decide! Then … decide.
Still all of a-dither?!
Sometimes we’re too close to the problem - we can’t detach.
We let feelings of guilt, shoulds and shouldn’ts, get in the way of reality.
Having someone else look over your shoulder and point out what is obvious to them - but you are quite unable to see! - will make all the difference.
Sometimes you need someone to help you break the mould. You need that extra push that enables you to break free from the things that are holding you back - without you realising! - and fulfil your massive promise.
Now as a coach, I’m happy to be the one who gives you that push. and I’m happy to have seen fantastic results with clients who were completely stuck in the mud!
People who are now achieving their dreams! And they’re so glad they decided to get the help a coach can give them. People like you and me, people of integrity who have something to offer to the world, often need a bit of a push to get started.
That integrity, that belief and honesty, can actually be holding you back when you are exactly the person we NEED out there in the fray!
If you need a shove to get you making the decisions that you KNOW will move the needle in your business, talk to me here!