The Secret to Making Better Choices
Learning to flex your decision-making muscle. No gym required.
Have you ever felt like a rabbit in the headlights when it comes to making a decision?
Whether you're facing a big life-changing choice or a simple everyday option, honing your decision-making skill is an essential ingredient for success.
So-called ‘big decisions’ have the ability to paralyse us all. However, that needn’t be the case.
In fact, decision-making is a skill that can be strengthened, just like a muscle.
In this article, we'll explore what you can do to train your decision-making muscle, giving you the confidence to navigate any crossroads you find yourself at in your life.
“The only impossible journey is the one you never begin” – Tony Robbins
This one’s going to be a 8-minute read.
Practice Makes Confident
Our ability to make fast, yet considered decisions is a skill. It’s not an innate talent we’re born with.
Like many things, confident decision-making comes only with practice. It’s not that we’re either good or bad at making decisions. It’s that we lack the experience in that moment, related to the decision itself.
Can you remember which sock you put on first this morning? Me neither. You did it on autopilot. But, when deciding the dress to wear to your best friend’s wedding. That’s going to evoke a lot more contemplation.
The decisions we find the easiest to make are in the areas of our life we’ve previously gained experience. Our intuition builds up with each choice. Similar to our biceps as we eke out that extra rep at the gym.
If I was thrust behind the wheel of an F1 car and asked to complete a lap of the Monaco Grand Prix circuit, I’d be a bumbling, nervous wreck. But, ask Lewis Hamilton and he’d breeze it.
That being said, even Sir Lewis didn’t know how sharp to take the chicane in his first practice lap.
Improving your decision-making skills is a pursuit of practice.
And practice = confidence.
Great Decisions Exist In All Of Us
Everyone has the ability to make great decisions. Everything great about your life has come about through the good choices you’ve made up to this point.
I trust that gives you a spring in your step. It should.
I’m facing one of life’s ‘big’ decisions at the moment. Deciding where I want to live next.
I’m in a fairly sleepy town in Kent, England. About 40 minutes outside of London. It just so happens to be the town I grew up in. The town where my parents live. And a town where I have many friends and happy memories.
It’s been comforting to be here for the past few months following the break-up of a previous romantic relationship.
But, my hometown is not where I want to be in 6 months’ time. I knew that when I first moved back here.
Choosing where to live presents itself as a big decision. And truth be told, it’s one I’ve been contemplating for longer than I should.
It’s true that our choice of location bares a sizeable impact on our life. However, it also doesn’t have to present as a permanent fixture.
Following some research for this article, one phrase that I found really stood out to me as it speaks directly to the challenge I’m facing:
"Hard choices are hard because there are no best options.” – Ruth Chang, Ted Talk (How to make hard choices)
In theory, I could live anywhere.
I have a job that I am lucky enough to be able to work remotely with.
Yet, that’s partly the problem. I don’t necessarily have a best option in front of me. Everywhere has its pros and cons. Thereby, making the obvious path to take all the more hazy.
Parameters such as where our office is based can force our hand. They stop us bobbing in a sea of overwhelm and indecision. When they don’t exist, the ball is firmly in our court.
Just as I often get decision paralysis when scrolling through Netflix, I’m feeling the same inertia about where I want to begin the next chapter of my life.
Yes, this decision holds significantly more importance than whether I fancy watching an episode of Ozark or Selling Sunsets. But its foundations are the same. I am presented with an abundance of choices.
That being said, the more I’ve been leaning into this feeling and researching this piece, the more I am starting to get closer to accepting my decision as perfectly imperfect.
The following 6 strategies have been helping me take steps towards where I want to drop my next pin. They’ve been training my decision-making muscle a day at a time. I trust they’ll help you with whatever choice you’re facing next. Be that big or small.
1. Take Small Steps
In sales, this is called the “yes-loading” strategy. It’s one of the most effective sales psychology techniques and one I used regularly during my sales career.
It relies on the fact that people are more likely to say "yes" to big questions if they follow a series of smaller questions.
Think of decision-making as the same.
If you keep stacking up the small decisions or “yes” moments in your life that edge you closer to a bigger goal, you’ll gain confidence and soon be making big, fast decisions as second nature.
2. Give Yourself A Research Deadline
Despite wanting to have every T-crossed and I-dotted, you’ll never have all the knowledge you require to execute perfectly before making a decision.
That’s exactly how I’ve felt on my creator journey so far. Action has actually taught me far more than marinating over the potential outcomes.
Whilst we might not get the full picture, it is often possible to gather 70-80% of the information before we make a decision.
This is where a deadline comes into play. As humans, we want to be perfect. We strive for 100%.
But knowing you have a deadline whereby you must take a path with whatever information you have up to that point forces us into action. And action leads to growth and learning.
It’s here where you’re training your decision muscle to be more agile and stronger next time, depositing the experience you gain in your mental bank.
3. Review Decisions To Learn From Them
Take time afterwards to reverse-analyse your decisions. Here, you can review what worked and also what you could have done better. Again, it’s all about adding the learnings to your bank of experience.
Too many people have their blinkers on. Rushing towards the next thing they must decide, without time to take stock. This invariably causes mistakes to be repeated and transformative lessons to fall by the wayside.
When you review a decision after the event, you’re also able to take more of a birds-eye view of it. This means you can view it clearer, from a new perspective and with a greater sense of balance than when you were in the heat of it.
Perfect prep for the next time you’re faced with something similar.
4. Two Ears, One Mouth
This is the ratio they should be used in. Listening is a key skill in making decisions.
That’s listening to others, as well as ourselves and our gut instincts.
Barack Obama hailed listening as one of his cornerstone principles for making educated decisions during his time in the Oval Office.
He states, “I created a sound decision-making process — one where I really listened to the experts, followed the facts, considered my goals and weighed all of that against my principles”.
Notice how he placed listening first on that list.
Moreover, Napoleon Hill, one of the pioneers of the self-help movement, writes in Think and Grow Rich, “Keep your eyes and ears wide open - and your mouth closed - if you wish to acquire the habit of prompt decisions”.
5. Recognise Your Mistakes As Part Of The Process
After all, these could become your biggest successes further down the track.
The famous quote from Thomas Edison says, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”.
Every decision you make should be seen as a tester. One that ultimately allows you to discover new and surprising results. Think about every decision you make edging you closer to your lightbulb moment.
6. Never Stop Deciding
Just because you’ve made a decision, whether good or bad, doesn’t mean it’s over and done with.
Decisions are often followed up with another. And so it continues. This helps you from getting complacent. After all, you’re only as sure as your last decision. You haven’t ‘made it’ because you’ve made a good one. In the same way that you haven’t blown it if you’ve made a bad choice.
As you improve at making decisions, you’ll become a great problem solver.
This is where you’ll also be able to inspire others into action and possibly start a cascade of positive momentum in your favour.
Learn to love decisions and accept that they’re coming at you thick and fast. They’re an incredible opportunity for growth.
Decide. Accept. Let Go.
Decision-making is anything but clean and straightforward. However, it’s a necessary part of everyday life and something we have a chance to get better at.
I’ve had to learn how to let go of the pros-cons list and the endless analysis of good vs. bad. I’m accepting that I’ll never have all of the answers in front of me when it comes to ‘big’ decisions.
It’s only when we accept that we’re making decisions based on the information available to us at the time, that decisions and their consequences can actually become freeing.
I’m also learning to let go of the fear of making a wrong decision. Gently pushing back against my risk-averse nature that is constantly telling me to take the safer, easier route.
It’s time to decide (oh, the irony) who I want to be and what I want to live for.
With that as my north star, I’m feeling liberated to base my decision to live on whatever will get me closer to it. I’m using that to inform my choice, rather than the qualities of the choice themselves.
Hard choices should be celebrated as opportunities to define ourselves and the lives we live.
They shouldn’t be something that stifles our potential. Or makes us feel shame because we’re having a tough time achieving clarity.
So, my advice is this. Make the decision and don’t beat yourself up if it ends up being a ‘bad’ one. Trust me when I say you don’t need to contemplate on a decision for as long as I have been. It’s a waste of finite energy. Energy that could be put to far greater use in your short life.
Finally, whatever conclusion you’ve reached, know that it doesn’t have to be one of permanence. You always have the agency to make another, better-informed decision following on from it if things don’t feel quite right.
And it’s with that in mind, that I think I’ll revisit my world map.
Until next week,
Jack