5 Tips For Making Better Decisions

Everyone has made their own decisions at some point in their lives and everyone has made a bad decision at least once. Making right sound decisions comes with experience and needs to be developed. Here are five steps to follow in helping you making better decisions in your career and personal life.

1. Outline the issue

Before making a decision, clearly outline the issues and strip away all unrelated things attached to the real issue. Ask yourself why you are ,making this decision and what the motivation is.

2. Use information

Use the information available to you. The information and knowledge available to you is actionable with a high degree of accuracy because proof of concept exists. Using information when making a decision gives you the comfort of knowing the information has been assimilated, tested or is validated.

3. Deal with your emotions

Your emotions can have a huge impact on decision making. Whilst it’s not entirely a bad thing, a good decision should be a balance of your emotions and being rational. You should only include emotions that are directly related to the decision you are making.

4. Consider risks and rewards

List all the positive and negative things that may occur as a result of your decision and who might also get affected by that same decision. The good things in your decision must outweigh the bad things because no decision is perfect.

5. Gut instinct

In the absence of experience or knowledge, your gut instinct might be the only option you have. Even when more refined analytics are available, your instincts can often provide a very valuable gut check against the reasonability or bias of other inputs.