A Guide in Decision-Making: Part One
My observations on how to streamline the decision process.
Most of the time, I like to think through every potential possibility of a situation before making a decision. Every risk needs to be immediately assessed with my counter move and counter-counter moves already planned. After all, life is a virtual reality chess competition, right? Other times, I’ll wake up with a feeling and make a decision on the spot.
It’s impossible to completely control the outcome of any decision. The best anyone can do is control the inputs of the process. Here are three things I’ve observed,
1. Patience
Sometimes I enjoy my fulltime job, learning the ins and outs of planning and operations. Other times, my body knows that I could be spending my time and energy in a more valuable way. This leads to a lot of internal dissonance.
Why don’t I just quit? I’ve already made the decision to stay until early 2021. Then why do I spend so much time complaining? Not sure.
Make a decision and be patient with it.
2. Priorities
Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby, has a rule for life that’s fairly self-explanatory, “If I’m not saying ‘hell yeah!’ to something then I’m saying no”.
We all have to spend time doing things we don’t prefer to do. Even the people at the “top” have grunt work. But, life is too short to not optimize for what gives us value.
About a few years ago, I stopped lunches with people I barely talk to for the sake of catching up. I was rarely excited before or after the meetups, especially since the conversations would usually dwindle into dull drama from high school.
Make choices that align with bigger priorities.
3. Acceptance
One of my faults, I like to search for things to do as an illusion of progress. I’ll create tasks out of things that could have just been left alone. I’ll get overly involved in other people’s decisions to avoid my own. The other day, I found an easy fix.
Sometimes, there is no decision to be made.
Right now, my company is going through a restructuring and my core team is being moved around. While, I’m nervous about where I’m going to land, and what I should do about it if it’s bad, there’s no amount of thinking ahead and trying to plan that will truly prepare me for reality. I can’t decide I won’t like the change ahead of time without experiencing it first.
Don’t dwell on decisions, give life a chance to happen.
