How To Make Decisions And Stop Being Indecisive
“Life is inherently risky. There is only one big risk you should avoid at all costs, and that is the risk of doing nothing.” — Denis Waitley
Indecisiveness
Are you tired of asking others for their opinion of what YOU should do with YOUR life?
Are you done with all the spiraling down when you’re compelled to make a tough decision?
Are you ready to take ownership of your own life choices?
If you answered yes (or in all probability a “maybe”, keeping in mind the subject) to the above questions, read on.
You’ll know you’ve made the right decision when there is peace in your heart. Stop listening to what the world says you should do. Start listening to your own heart. There are only a few people in this world who will stay completely true to you, and YOU should be one of them. Too many people get distracted by the noise of the world. Listen to your own voice and your own soul. Deep inside, you know what you want, let no one decide that for you. — Unknown
I came across something called the “Decision Matrix” (widely applied to business use cases). In brief, a numeric priority is set to each of the options (say, whether to opt for a new cost plan or to stick to the old or choosing Supplier 1 over Supplier 2 etc.) in order to work on the action items effectively. Extending this concept to everyday life, here’s a tip to kick the habit of indecisiveness out!
The Decision Table
Steps to make your own Decision Table
Step 1: Decide on an “Impact Scale” (shown above) that shows numeric values corresponding to the impact or quality of a decision.
Step 2: Decide on an “Importance Scale” (shown above). The sole purpose of this is to measure how important something is to YOU. It helps to quantify your feelings and ensures that you are taking decisions based on your own requirements and needs.
Step 3: Create or draw a table as shown above (tap the image to zoom in) having the possible options and list out the characters of those options (it does not have to be pros and cons — just focus on describing the choice at hand in points). The example here is of a student trying to choose the best University for himself/herself.
Step 4: Now that we have the characters (good program, expensive, location etc.) of the two Universities written down, we try and assign a number to them from our Impact Scale. For example, a University that has a good program would obviously have a great impact on the quality of education of a student. So we assign a 9 out of 10 there. We assign a number from the Impact Scale to the rest of the character points as well.
Step 5: This step is all about introspection. We assign values to each character point from the Importance Scale. Taking the example again about the good program of University A, the student feels it is very important to him/her and assigns it a full score of 3.
Step 6: Once we have all the Impact and Importance scores filled out, we must multiply them (refer to the table above) to get the “Result” values. The values in this column are then added to get the “Resultant Totals”. Here, the student gets a score of 23 for University A and 45 for University B. So naturally, the best bet would be University B.
I’ve taken a fairly simple case to illustrate the use of the Decision Table but it can be used for multiple options and your impact and importance scales can differ too.
Sometimes with the many thoughts running through our mind, it is more challenging to see the numerous opportunities before us than it is when we put them down on paper. So I hope this helped to clear the air. If it did, don’t be shy to “clap”!
You can’t make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen. It’s time to take matters into your own hands and be proactive about them. Don’t become a spectator in your own life.
