How To Be a Better Decision-Maker

Decisions, decisions, decisions. They’re part of everyday life! Every minute, you will need to make some type of decision — small and big. Some are easier to make while some are harder to make. Sure, the easier ones may be done in a snap such as choosing what to eat for breakfast or what shirt to wear.

But the harder decisions will take a lot more time and effort to make. In fact, you need to learn how to be a better decision-maker, so you’ll know how to handle crucial choices that may affect the long term situations in your life. Here are a few decision making tips that may help you become a better decision-maker.

Tip 1: Categorize Your Decisions

As you grow older, you’re going to discover that decisions may come in bulk at once. In other words, you may face a multitude of different hard decisions that may haunt your sleep in a second. Your first question will possibly be, “Which one should I do first?”.

That is totally normal because you can’t fulfill all decisions at once. So one of the keys to making good decisions is to categorize your decisions. How exactly do you categorize them? Well, the best way to categorize them is by order of importance.

You can factor your decisions as to whether they are urgent, important, or both.

The first decisions to make are those that are both urgent and important. The next ones to handle are urgent but not so important ones. After that, you need to handle the not so urgent types but the important ones. The last ones are non-urgent and non-important decisions. If you categorize your decision-making process like this, you’ll learn a valuable skill on how to make better decisions at work. This is how organizations categorize their decision-making process.

Tip 2: Outline Your Decisions

Another decision-making tactic I have for you is called outlining. When you make your decision, you need data. For example, if you want to invest money into a business, you need to first gather all the data you need to make your decision. Of course, gathering data is just the first part. You need to outline your data, so you’ll know what information is important. For instance, when you invest in a company, you need to take note of their marketing strategy, financial performance, debt, and company equity.

Put those in an outline and put the data under them. Outlining your decisions will enhance your decision-making skills and clearly show you how to make the right choice.

Tip 3: Control Your Emotions

The last thing to do is to control your emotions. When you’re learning how to become a good decision-maker, you must also learn how to discipline yourself. Never ever make decisions when your head isn’t clear. It’s good to make some rules for yourself so that you don’t regret your decisions. If you have a number of decisions to make but your head isn’t in the right place, it’s better to delay finalizing your decision.

Either you sleep on it or try to relax your mind. You can try meditation or you can try exercising. The whole point is to simply cool down your emotions first so that you can have clear judgment. So before making a judgment, ask yourself whether you made it based on logic and facts or emotions and impulse. If it is the latter, take your time making the decision and delay it.

Conclusion

These are three tips on how to be a better decision-maker are proven and effective methods on how to properly make decisions. These tips are especially helpful at work or in business. They work really well for the really crucial and big decisions that may give you long term consequences if not handled properly.

So if you want to become a better decision-maker, why not check out some of these tips that may help?