A time with an almost infinite amount of complexity and required literature has led many to become paralyzed, finding it near-impossible to make the correct decision. The market trusts us to vote with our wallets, choosing the right restaurants, the best politicians, and the most beautiful outfits. But do we trust ourselves? When we don’t trust ourselves, we relegate our decision-making to others. I often liken this world to a driverless society where everyone points to someone else. I did it because you thought I should, but you only thought I should do it because that’s what your other friend did.
An inability to make decisions can make us question our free will. Worse, it can lead to a victimhood mentality. After all, if we never make decisions, we can always blame someone else for the consequences. At the same time, if we never make decisions, we can never feel proud of anything we accomplish, either. The actualized person shows a secure judgment and can make positive decisions, following their inner compass. Because their decisions are based on their personality and needs, they can feel more content with the results. There’s something inherently addictive in fully trusting your inner will and making authentic decisions about what you want. Decision-makers fully own their lives. They feel content with relationships, work, and their daily actions because they know it’s what they chose, not what others pushed onto them.
We need to nurture our ability to make decisions to become empowered, self-actualized members of society. But how much do you trust yourself to make correct decisions based on limited information?
Did your parents trust you to make your own decisions?
Our genetic makeup, past experiences, and even faulty brain-wiring can cause us to have issues making decisions. People with chronic indecisiveness tend to suffer from a learned helplessness. Not only do I not know the correct answer, but I always need other people to validate my choice and tell me I made the right decision. Curling parents raise children who never have to make big decisions about anything.
More and more people are diagnosed with ADHD, a diagnosis often associated with executive dysfunction. People with ADHD usually know that they need to make a decision, but their inability to create and follow through with it causes them to have all manners of issues, causing them to run late and often fail to do basic tasks.
Learn more about ADHD and decision making from Dr. Russell Barkley at:
https://www.additudemag.com/7-executive-function-deficits-linked-to-adhd/
This may be a normal reaction to this modern world, where we are simply swarmed with distractions, but it’s also real life. We must learn to live with abundance and find ways to prioritize and focus on what’s in front of us.
A study analyzing the impact of choice overload on consumer decision-making found that too many options can overwhelm individuals, leading to indecision or avoidance of choice altogether. https://www.academia.edu/104789706/An_Analysis_on_the_Impact_of_Choice_Overload_to_Consumer_Decision_Paralysis
Your parents have already cleared your path for you, making everything easy. Possessive and dominant parents might spend a lot of time beating “right and wrong” into you, constantly hoovering over you and questioning every independent choice you make. You might also have the mind of a researcher, always searching for more information, looking for the other side, and worrying that you “missed something big.” And so, you tell yourself you will have to postpone deciding until “you know more.”
My dad would always trust my judgment. When I was 10, he asked me whether I preferred the euro or if I’d rather keep the Swedish currency, SEK. He routinely asked me questions on philosophy. My mom always had a deep respect for my independence. She trusted me to take care of myself and to handle my homework without her asking. At age 12, I joined the Social Democratic party and had great fun expressing my opinion on various life matters.
How does an inability to make decisions affect you?
There can be many valid reasons not to make a decision or to avoid making a decision, but ask yourself what the consequences are. How many missed opportunities have you had because you failed to trust and exercise judgment? How much doubt do you have to suffer daily because you constantly ask for a second opinion?
Take a moment to write down your experiences and reflect on how you could benefit from developing stronger decision-making skills.
Do you want to eat the same thing for breakfast every day?
Continue your journaling session and ask yourself what decisions you are asked to make daily. How many decisions do you make in a day? How complex are these decisions? What limitations and excuses do you come up with that keep you from making better decisions?
Many decisions are trivial and have little impact on our day or happiness. When we recognize a decision as unimportant, we often delegate the decision to other people. I don’t care, you can decide. Otherwise, we might just create habits to automate these decisions. Frequently, we pick the simple choice. Sometimes, we eliminate the decisions, simplifying our lives by scaling down.
We might clear our wardrobe and get rid of clothes. We may buy multiple garments with the same color or shape. Finally, we may always eat the same thing for breakfast. This might not work as well if you, like me, are of the curious type. Most people crave a degree of variety and change in their lives, and the only way to get you there is to make new decisions. But there’s no reason why that should give you anxiety. Decision-making can be fun when you let it be.
First, you’ll want to understand that you can’t decide while gathering information. The part of your brain responsible for brainstorming is the door guard of the part that makes decisions. You’ll have to get comfortable switching hats. Typically, healthy decision-making always starts with a round of gentle brainstorming. If you go straight to decision-making, you’ll decide based on prejudice and stereotypes. You want to make correct decisions, and for that, you need to look at the information at hand. But given that life is filled with decisions, we can’t afford to think about anything for too long, lest we stall other vital problems. We, therefore, need to switch between information-gathering and decision-making frequently. Ask yourself what hat you need right now: Do you need to be the judge who makes a choice or the researcher who does the research?
Developing Decision-Making Skills
I recently made a discovery. LLMs like ChatGPT make better decisions when you first ask them to reason about a topic and then make a decision. When you ask an LLM to first answer a question and then provide their reasoning, you increase the risk of hallucinations. Humans are not different. Post-hoc reasoning is often a fabrication. People constantly look for arguments for why their initial decision is right instead of first looking at an issue with an open mind. Here’s my custom instructions:
“Your goal is to first reason about how you might solve a problem, what methodology you should use Then, use said methodology to look for information and online sources to help you make a decision. Then, present a hypothesis, and finally, try to test your hypothesis. At the end of a message, ask yourself follow-up questions about additional things to consider.”
This is a simple way to break down decision-making into stages:
- First, reflect on how you would solve a problem, what methodology you might need, what questions to ask, and how to find the correct answer.
- Secondly, apply your methodology and look for relevant sources and information to your decision.
- Thirdly, present a hypothesis for what you think might be the correct answer, and then ask yourself how you would prove or confirm it.
- Fourth, run the test, see your results, and revise your decision or answer if necessary to comply with your test findings.
- Finally, write down follow-up questions for things you might want to consider next.
This process will help ensure a positive and easy-to-follow process to help you solve problems better. Let’s put it to the test shall we. Imagine that you’re thinking about buying a new printer. Let’s get started.
Deciding to buy a new printer
First, you might want to consider your budget, and your time-frame. You’ll want to establish when you need the printer, how much money you can put in to the purchase, and you’ll want to formulate what you want the printer to be able to do. You’ll also want to consider where you might find the printer, where you can buy it, and you’ll want to consider what different reviews say about different printers.
I personally tend to have a three month rule when making big purchases. If I still want it after three months, I’ll buy it. It can also be worth timing your purchase with new market releases. Even if you’re not buying the latest model, new releases tend to drive down the prices of older generations. Now, you decide you’ll buy it in three months, and you estimate that you want to put about 150$ to the printer. Now, you want it to be able to print out documents so that you can easily proofread writing and make corrections, and you only really need black-and-white printing.
You don’t have much desk space, so you want a smaller printer that is easy to put aside. You’ll want to buy it in a local store, so you consider your available tech stores and you decide to look at their different selections online. After selecting a few that meet your criteria, you google online reviews and look for trustworthy information to get the final verdict. Then, you pick out a printer you think could be good.
Making the commitment to buy
Finally, you try to imagine what your life would be like if you bought this printer, how and when you would use it, how it fits your criteria, how you will get and replace cartridges for it when it runs out of ink, and how long you plan to use it for, for how long the warranty is valid. If you still feel happy with the idea, you go to the store, and you buy the printer. Finally, you might write down a set of other questions that came up in the process, like where you’ll store your documents that you print, and if there are any easy ways to transcribe hand-written texts to store them back on your computer again after you’re done editing a document.
Do your friends love to tell you “I told you so.”?
We often get stuck in analysis paralysis as we ask ourselves what the “ideal” decision would be. The need for things to be perfect can significantly impair our decision-making skills. Analysis paralysis doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Psychology Today discusses how chronic decision paralysis can deteriorate decision-making abilities over time, emphasizing the importance of managing cognitive load to maintain mental agility. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-instincts/202301/3-tips-to-tackle-decision-paralysis
Analysis paralysis likes to hang out in a place called “The culture of blame.” In the blame culture, anyone who makes a decision is highly criticized; there is no point in trying anything new, and anyone in charge is “an idiot.” Such social cultures make the cost of making decisions high for anyone who tries. Do your friends and family always try to talk you out of your choices? Are you surrounded by an army of people who will say, “I told you so,” whenever something goes wrong?
Standing up to the Cynic
The cynic might look at the example I gave above and say that, even if you take all those steps, you’ll still have a chance you made the wrong decision. But what is the ideal decision anyway, and how do we get there?
Let’s step back and consider the definition of truth or right. In an ideal world, we’d be able to nail down every single variable, every perspective, every fact, and we’d decide after calculating all those variables. We know that’s impossible – we will never have all the facts, there’s always more to consider, and we don’t have enough time to run the math to confirm we’re 100% right.
We should try our best to be informed, but there’s no way to ensure that we are entirely correct about anything we do, ever. It’s a good and healthy practice to make uncertainty your friend and to find comfort in not knowing. Listen to your doubts, but don’t let them hold you back. Surrender and let go, and commit fully to the joy of constant discovery and a world of infinite questions. You’ll never be bored for another day in your life.
What’s the right decision anyway?
Cynics might tell you there’s no such thing as right and wrong, and nothing matters. Such people have never worked in a factory, plowed a field, or built a house. Perhaps they’ve forgotten what it feels like to be in love or go hungry, or they’ve never experienced real fear. Postmodern relativism came with people who grew up never having to worry about physical needs like food and clothing. Their work in information fields was so abstract and detached from the real world that they never had to develop a compass based on anything real. It’s easy to feel detached from the world when you’ve never worked a day or spent your entire life studying and never got to apply yourself or have real experiences. If you wonder if anything matters, it’s time to go and find out. Do something that is outside your comfort zone. Do something hard.
But most of all, ask yourself what a good decision is. How do we evaluate decisions and learn to make better decisions?
There are three questions you should ask yourself to determine a good decision:
Do I have good arguments and reasons to make this decision?
The list below is inspired by George Doran, who created the idea of SMART goals. They help me significantly in my job in IT Management, where I’m tasked to make many difficult decisions, on a daily basis.
- Do I have any metrics or data that I can use to support my decision?
- Is the decision physically possible or realistic? If you decide to buy a Tesla but you don’t have the money, it’s the wrong decision for you.
- How specific is your decision? If your decision is abstract, like if you decide that you should take care of your body but don’t break that down to specifics, your decision is not very useful.
- Is the decision relevant to your situation and where you are at in life? For example, you can’t decide how your wife should live her life or what China should vote for in an important policy. You can only choose how you should live.
- Consider the time frame. How long did you have to make the decision? And for how long did you continue to follow the decision? If you had to make a quick decision, it doesn’t have to be as accurate as if you spent more time thinking about it. If you changed your mind quickly after making the wrong decision, it may have been a good decision – it helped you get to the right decision faster.
Do I believe this is the right decision to make?
You should genuinely believe and feel that you’re doing the right thing. You should be able to do a final check where you ask yourself: Do I genuinely believe this? Am I being candid with myself about this? Does this feel right? If it doesn’t, it’s a bad decision for you. Even a correct decision is wrong if it goes against your gut. It’s wrong because it undermines your self-trust.
As human beings, we are not asked to be objectively or universally correct. What is right for society might not be right for you. This is why you don’t need to ask other people for their opinion. The most important person you should ask is yourself. People who aspire to live according to what is universally correct and discard their personal needs and feelings live less happy lives and are less successful. Your heart needs to be fully in it. You need to feel committed to and passionate about what you do.
Was this the correct action?
Looking back, can you determine if your decision was right or wrong? If it was wrong, why was it bad? If it was right, then why was it right? And if you can’t determine if it was right or wrong, why not?
Getting started making decisions
Celebrate decisions made. Not only are they fun – they bring you forward, they give you passion and fire, they bring clarity and peace, and they also open for enthusiasm and excitement. Your decisions will be tested and challenged, and you’ll revise as you go, but every little step gets you one step closer to the truth. Actively journal and reflect on decisions and talk about them with other people and in groups.
If you can honor and respect other people and support them in their choices, you’ll find that they’ll become more open to support and respect you in yours. When making decisions, it helps to be mindful. Stop and notice any doubt or anxiety in you, and listen to your nervous system. A well regulated and calm nervous system will make better decisions. Let yourself take a deep breath and calm yourself. You can become more relaxed by listening more to your body and by carefully scanning your surroundings, becoming more centered on where you are, what you feel, and what you need right now.
Why We Need More Decision-Makers
We live in a time that drastically requires a lot of decisions to be made in rapid succession. We need more leaders willing to step forward and take the decision, even if it means blame and criticism from other people. And we also need people to be willing to test and revise their decisions once made, as we all learn from learning by trial and error.
Notice how, with every decision, you become more passionate as a person, more alive, more confident, and more empowered. Recognize the energy released when your entire body and mind converge on and unite on a task or action. Inside you, you have an infinite source of energy to pull from to achieve your goals. Your goal now is simple. You need to reshape your neurons and build new pathways to engineer your mind to make better and faster decisions that align more with your needs and values.
This will require systematic work and effort, step by step work. You’ll find that you’ll need an almost equal amount of time dedicated to making decisions and also resting, processing and finding peace in the decisions that you have made. In those moments of rest, your brain has the time to align on a task and make peace with the direction. And while there will be people who stand in your way, you’ll find that the world will thank you for your courage to step up and take charge of your life. That means people have one less person they need to worry about.
