5 Strategies to Help You Make Winning Decisions
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| Photo - Medium |
Have
you regretted any of the decisions that you’ve made? I’ll take a wild guess
here and say “yes.” We all have walked in Remorse-land many times and have made
mistakes we would gladly erase if given the chance. So then, if someone comes
to you and offers you a time machine to go back and alter some of your not-so-bright
choices, you would take it, right?
Of
course, this all makes for an enticing plot of a Hollywood blockbuster, but in
reality, such kind of magic doesn’t exist. How about then if you are given the
next best alternative, the tools to make better decisions from the outset,
rather than living with regrets and wishing to have the power to bend time?
Here
are five strategies which will help you become better at picking the winning
option:
1. See the future you
In
his widely-popular research, Hal Hershfield, a UCLA associate professor who has
studied for years how people can make better long-term decisions, asked
participants to envision themselves in 10 years. fMRIs detecting brain activity
showed that we think about our older selves the same way we do about complete
strangers.
But
when part-takers were shown computer-altered pictures of themselves looking
near retirements age, things changed— they allocated twice as much money to
their retirement fund vs. buying something new today.
The
rather salient takeaway here is that, to make better decisions, we must imagine how they will
impact our future selves. If you believe a choice will help you get you closer
to the future happy and successful you, then, by all means, take it. But if you
are unsure, better have another think.
2. Expand your pool of options
An
excellent piece in the NYTimes describes a study by Paul Nutt—a Professor of
Management at Ohio State University, who, in the early 1980s carried out a
study among senior managers at public and private companies in the U.S. and
Canada on how they made decisions. He found out that half of the decisions in
companies failed because people tended to take shortcuts and didn’t spend
sufficient time looking for alternatives and evaluating them (only 29% did so).
And
this can cost us. According to other research, when we ignore assessing other
options, our chances for success are about 50 %, while decisions involving at
least 2 choices lead to a favorable outcome in 2 out of 3 cases.
To
come up with some quality ideas, in addition to expanding the size of our canvas,
we should involve other people in our brainstorming endeavor, draft a list of
the choices and assign weights to each. The highest score wins.
These
approaches will enhance our decision-making skills, which, in turn, will give us a shot at something much bigger; a
chance to reach our goals, be happier and have a more fulfilling future.
3. Limit your pool of information
Yes,
this idea goes directly against the above point and sounds counterintuitive,
but if you get to think about it—it does make sense. Studies from Princeton and
Stanford Universities, have revealed that when we immerse ourselves in a sea of
information, we may end up pursuing non-instrumental data, which we then use to
make decisions.
Naturally,
the quality of that outcome will be questionable. Sometimes, we may end up with
a choice that we wouldn’t have made altogether (and possibly regret it later
on) if we didn’t rely on this irrelevant information.
How
do we end up in such a position? It’s driven by our aversion to uncertainty.
Simply put, our brains hate volatility and try to resolve it any way they can.
One way is by seeking any information that seems like a good candidate and
hastily pick it.
Phew,
problem solved! Move on. But, as research tells us, seeking out more details
do help make a decision, but it may not necessarily be a good one.
4. Take a page from Darwin and Franklin
When
Malcolm Gladwell published his book Blink: The Power of Thinking
Without Thinking in 2005, the world was fascinated by the idea that we
can make complex decisions with very little effort—just by trusting our gut
instinct and by ‘snapping it.’ That is, the book offers some research to
support the idea that quick solutions based on intuition can yield surprisingly
successful outcomes.
Sounds
great but many subsequent studies don’t quite support this. What’s more,
sticking to the “old school” ways of making decisions such as conscious
thinking and evaluation of alternatives, can lead to more high-quality results.
Just
take a note from Darwin who used the pros-and-cons list to make the most
important decision of his life—whether to marry. Ben Franklin, similarly,
always used this same “simple” method when confronted with challenging choices.
Sometimes, the conventional non-fancy ways to make decisions happen to be the
best options.
5. Kill the Company
“Kill
the Company” is a best-selling book by Lisa Bodell—the CEO of a consulting
company which helps businesses embrace change and innovation. The basic premise
of the exercise is that executives are asked to brainstorm all of the ways in
which their company can go down. Then, packed with this insight, they work
backwards to try and remedy the loopholes in their processes, strategies and
choices.
The
idea has proven very effective and easy to practice. Just imagine that a
decision you pick today turns out to be a complete failure in the future. What
will you do to ensure a better outcome?
In
the end, our decisions are the foundations of the future lives we build for
ourselves, as they have the power to directly affect our success trajectories. While taking the wrong turn may not always have
catastrophic consequences, we are also rarely given a do-over in life.
And
why is it so vital that we keep honing our choice-making skills, you may ask?
It’s very simple—YOLO.
Which
one of these strategies to make winning decisions resonated most with you and
why?
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