MAKING A DECISION

I have been suffering from this condition for a while now and all my efforts of basically waiting till I get older and matured and in that process hopefully self-eradicate this condition seem to be in vain.

Or I certainly have lost the patience for it.

The condition is called : 'NOT BEING ABLE TO MAKE A DECISION AND TO LIVE WITH IT'.

I have always been very indecisive - this inspite of having very strong opinions on what I like or dislike.

Over the last couple of days I really took to analyzing what makes me so indecisive and I concluded the following:

• Overconfidence

• Emotion

• Greed

When I am overconfident, I often make suboptimal decisions.

When I am emotional - well those are the decisions I most regret!

When I am greedy, there simply is no decision unless there lands a perfect option (and there never is one!) :(.

I am not the most elegant when it comes to making compromises and perhaps my greed comes from a deep sense of urgency of time and fear of regret.

Anyways, I have trying to put in place a strategy that will help me overcome my decision dilemmas and here is the plan:

1.) Less information is sometime good

I am someone who loves to research things to death (I once spent three hours on Youtube trying to research a nailpaint colour!! INSANE !!) While common sense tells us that more data leads to well informed decisions, some decisons simply do not require you to know it all! As long as there exists a well defined criteria say X,Y,Z that provides an adequate solution, a decison meeting those criteria should often be good enough in most cases.

2.) Pick my battles

Some decisions such as buying a house, marriage, university degree and likes are worth mulling over. However many day to day decisons such as which documentary to watch on Netflix or which toothpaste to buy are not. Today's marketting geniuses and easy access to reviews make every commodity we interact with appear more significant than it truely is. Perhaps use a 2 minute decison rule for these.

4.) Use a decison tool if needed

For the geek in me and those who can't live without excel use a weighted decision matrix to weigh your options.

And for those who are lazy enough to develop their own matrix check this link out: http://www.weighteddecision.com/

With pre-made matrices on 'Should I date her/him?', 'Which diet should I follow?', 'Where should I go for a holiday?', 'What car should I buy?', this should make you decision life a tad bit easier!

5.) Analyze a decison as if advising a friend

One thing I am really good at is helping people make decisons by walking them through the pros and cons of their options . A theory of applying this same tactic to oneself for making a decision seems to be circulation around the internet over the recent years and I think that this might be a neat little excercise to try.

3.) Follow thy intuition

Need I say more!

And finally remembering that most, if not all decision can be reveresed is definitely reassuring.

What techniques and tools do you guys use to make a decision?

To a healthier and efficient decision making!

P.S: The other thing I am working on right now is to make a decision and stick to it, irrespective of whether I receive new information, devise a better plan or my intuition nudging me towards a diffetent option. All this in an attempt to learn to live and be satisfied with my decision. Ofcourse exceptions apply ;)