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5 Shortcuts to Better Decision Making


Productivity Skills

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Unit Summary

Decision making is inevitable, and it can make or break your productivity.
Here are 5 tips to guarantee that your decisions benefit your capacities:
  1. Economize
  2. Advise Your Imaginary Friend
  3. Avoid Information Overload
  4. Step Outside the Box
  5. Review Your Decisions

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In this unit, you will learn 5 strategies to facilitate the process of decision making.
Are you wondering how a different approach to making decisions can enhance productivity? Think about it. Life is mostly the results of your decisions: since early morning, when you are considering whether to wake up immediately or snooze the alarm until you are thinking at night whether to call it a day or do stay up a bit more.
Below are 5 pieces of advice to improve the quality of your decisions:
1- Economize: Your intellectual power diminishes with every decision you make, so don’t waste your thinking energy except on situations that are worth it. In psychology, the term “decision fatigue” refers to the state when you start making bad decisions after you have already done many. On the long term, this can lead to stress and create the temptation to procrastinate.
2- Advise Your Imaginary Friend: If you are about to make a decision, pretend that you're not directly involved. Instead, it’s your imaginary friend who has to make that decision. Just sit with him/her, discuss the entire matter and give your best thoughts about the appropriate decision. With this technique in mind, you will find yourself breaking free from the negative emotions that would have otherwise controlled you.
3- Avoid Information Overload: Probably you’re familiar with the situation when someone complains: “I have a lot of clothes to the extent that I don’t know what to wear”. This can often happen during a decision making process, if you go on researching, thinking, gathering information and data until the traffic of input in your mind exceeds your ability to concentrate. So, keep your thinking focused and relevant.
4- Step outside the Box: Here’s the fun part of decision making, the factor that makes you stand out as a creative decision maker. After you’ve gathered the information you need, push them a step further, make the ordinary sound different and execute your decision in a new light. For example, if you decided to work instead of watching the DVD you just bought, consider working while you eat some popcorn. Challenging familiar patterns creates motivation.
5- Review Your Decisions: This little step should happen at two instances: before and after you’ve taken a decision. First, you should prepare a back-up plan in case something unexpected happens to your original arrangements. Second, you should evaluate your decision after you’ve executed it, so that you can harness its advantages and avoid its disadvantages for the next decisions you are about to make.
Productivity killers lurk everywhere, inside and outside your mind. One of them is the traps of decision making, a process that could sometimes cost you a lot of time to complete and also to make up for, if it was a bad decision. Following the above tactics puts you on the right track, and practicing them would pave your way to become a brilliant decision maker, both efficient and effective.