decision diy

It's easy to get stuck as a decision maker. It's hard to help others understand the true significance of your decision critiera. It's hard to match others' experience and expertise to your specific situation. And it's hard to get out of the way of your own perspective.

The thought exercises on this page can help put the spotlight on the elements of your decision that you may not have considered or place old elements in a new light.

Find a partner to talk through the ones that appeal to you ... but choose your partner wisely. You'll want someone who won't be personally impacted by your decision, and someone who can be candid enough to challenge your status quo.

GREAT from the START

FRAME WITH CARE

Framing your decision is often the most important step in coming to a solid conclusion. By way of example, having a new job opportunity presented to you can easily become: "I need to decide whether to stay at my current job or leave for this new opportunity." This is a poor frame that locks you into a rigid either/or decision. Try something like, "I need my next job to offer me greater fulfillment or income."

EXPAND OPTIONS

Sixty percent of decision-makers limit their thinking by giving themselves only two options ("Is it this or is it that?"). Break free by asking yourself:

Can I do this AND that?
What if the options on my radar right now suddenly became unavailable to me? What would I do then?

Avoid making any decision until you have at least come up with a third option.

DECISION Pitfalls

COMMON DECISION BLUNDERS

Overconfidence bias

When we overestimate our own knowledge or ability regardless of what data tells us.
"Of course I should take this job. There's no way I can't succeed."

confirmation bias

Looking for or preferring information that supports our existing beliefs or conclusions.
"Of course I should take this job. Everyone I have talked to about it has told me that I'll do a great job. There's no way I won't succeed."

availability bias

Relying on information that comes readily to mind when making decisions.

"Of course I should take this job. The last person who had the job performed it with ease. How hard can it be? I'm going to do great."

anchoring bias

Relying too heavily on the first piece of information learned on a topic.

"Of course I should take this job. My colleague Anne told me that I should ask lots of questions about what success looks like for this position, but the interviewers told me that I had the qualifications they wanted, so I'm going to skip doing that."

STATUS QUO bias

A tendency to prefer options that maintain one's current situation or state of affairs.

"Of course I should not take this job. Why should I take on extra work and responsibility for a 5% increase in pay? And I'm doing great where I am now."

before you decide
check your Confidence

Intervention 1 for Overconfidence

Feeling pretty confident in your decision? Try a pre-mortem.

Protocol: Imagine that it's two (2) years in the future, and your decision has failed--utterly and miserably. What went wrong? Why did it fail? Now map backwards. How can you enhance your options and make a better decision, or a plan for implementing your decision that mitigates these pitfalls?

A Decision-maker's habit

decision journal

Science has proven that our minds are outstanding at remapping the past to bolster our confidence in our forecasting and decision-making skills for the future. This means that, our tendency is not to worry that we are poor decision-makers, but instead to worry that we can't anticipate external factors.

How do you get an accurate read?
Keeping a journal of your decisions helps you get very accurate about your decision-making skills. Here's what we recommend tracking:

Name the Decision
Record the Date of the Decision
Record your Decision Factors (e.g. on what your decision was based)
Record your Forecasted Outcomes
Track Who Helped Guide and Inform Your Decision

Set a tickler to do a read-through of past decisions from two or more months back. Track your accuracy. Compare outcomes to what you forecasted. Start learning from your previous decisions from where you are today. And remember to leave your recent decisions undisturbed to give you time to forget what you decided.

We GUARANTEE you'll learn a lot from this process and enhance your decision-making potential!