How To Make Better Decisions

These eight decision-making tactics from David Lahey’s book, Predicting Success, are helpful to me and hopefully useful to you as well:

Deep breathing, to clear your mind.
Researching, to feel confident that you have all the information in front of you.
Listing your options, in either verbal or written form, to keep the whole picture front of mind.
Following through on the possible outcomes, complete with likely predictions and acknowledgement of whether they’re negative or positive (or design yourself a decision tree, that lays out every possible consequence visually).
Testing your intuition, by imagining a committed decision and then gauging the corresponding feeling it inspires in your gut.
Taking the time you need, so long as it doesn’t become an overly indulgent distraction.
Evaluating your decision, an after-the-fact exercise that engages a conscious inventory of the lessons learned.
Coming to terms with your pick, always cognizant of the reality that no decision is going to lead to a perfectly ideal outcome, and that being at peace with your choice is worth lots.

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Eric Jacobson On Management And Leadership

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