Till the
completion of my school life my parents took all decisions for me. That’s
include which cloth should I wear to which shoes looks good with that dress.
This decision making process goes deep down at many levels which even includes
finding good friends for me. It’s not like I was complaining about any of this
but was enjoying a worry and decision free life.
I need to
move out of home for the first time after school for graduation, again that
decision was also taken by my parents too. During graduation I was in company
of some known friends from school but my day to day decision making was really
pathetic. It gone down to such a lowest level that even if I have to choose a
dress I need to toss a coin. So after tossing a coin if head comes up, I will
wear blue shirt else white one. Someday another set of toss needed if I have
checked and plane blue shirts with me, to actually arrive on final conclusions.
I got addicted to this kind of decision making to such an extent that it became
an obsession about every decision during that phase of my life. This obsession
changed when one fine day I couldn’t locate any coin while taking a decision or
making a choice. That few hours of desperation had taught me how to take
decisions and confidence of taking my own decisions. Some of the biggest
decisions I took that day was “Do I go to college today or not”, “Which Shirt
and Pant combination I should wear today”, “Should I take bath and shave, or
shave and bath or only bath no shave or neither bath nor shave, before going to
college”, “Should I go by public transport to college or use my bicycle” etc.
So you can find not only about the decisions I use to take by the help of coins
but also what kind of decisions I think are the biggest decisions of life at
that time.
I am sure
many of you go through this kind of phase in life, when you are so used to the
other person’s decision making that when chance comes to take your own decision,
you don’t know what to do next. The easiest choice is to toss a coin and
decide, probably because that’s what peoples in movies do.
I no longer
use coins to decide about trivial decisions of life, even in major decisions I
took I don’t need a coin. Before I tell the process I followed you need to
understand that, we all need to take decisions every day and someday we may involve
in taking some major life changing decisions too. Decisions either big or small
is part and parcel of every phase of life. No one in this world can escape this
decision making process and most of the time we do take correct decisions as
per circumstances and sometime we take the decisions and only come to know when
the result of that decision comes to picture. What so ever is the case, there
is no escape for anyone in terms of decision making. So how to take decisions. So
what are the steps I took so that I became now a decision maker? Steps are
simple and mentioned below.
Know Your Limitations – There are chances you will be
aware of your limitations. The limitation of not able to take any firm decision
or any decision at all. So know your limitations first. Then try to eliminate
those limitations one after another. It’s better to go bottom up rather than
top down. Collectively all your limitations become problem. So add up all your
limitations you will come up the major problem. Finding solution to the major
problem is easy rather than finding solution to individual limitations. If you
are comfortable enough then go top down approach, i.e. breaking down your
problems in smaller limitations and attack each limitations either one after
other or at one go. Which so ever approach you choose the result should always
be same.
In my case
too, I was aware of my limitations about decision taking inabilities about
personal choices, but when the decision making was involved with group of
peoples I was not that bad. I analysed the problem and found out I was spending
too much of time in thinking and deciding on trivial things. So I stopped choosing
one among those petty things, rather I choose the first option available. If I
go to college wearing light or checked or dark blue shirt nothing will happen
unless it’s not washed, not pressed or not torn off. So among all the shirt I
have to choose if choose the first one visible in front of me (irrespective of
the color, type etc.) will help in deciding something which I was struggling
earlier. I started following this pattern for buying, picking and wearing dress
materials for some time. This gave me the confidence that I can choose or decide
something. Gradually when my decision making capabilities improved I started
applying thinking and knowledge to those decisions too. So gradually based on
the confidence level of decision making you will recognize the options, it will
no longer choosing only the first options. It all start with the approach you
choose to eliminate that limitation which may turned out as problem.
Spend time on Big Decisions Only – When I stopped thinking much to
the trivial decision making it made my life easy compare to it was earlier
because I can focus on more important things in life. As mentioned earlier we
need to take decisions almost every moment starting from what time to wake up
to the time you want to sleep. If you are struggling hard in those small
decisions you will lose lots of time making decisions for those things which are
absolutely unnecessary. Yes, spend time deciding trival things but not more
than 30 seconds. I think the time mentioned is more than enough to decide when
to wake up or when to sleep or what to wear or what to eat. Your brain should
process all these petty decisions quickly and automatically like the way you
decide about crossing a road where there is no paediatrician signals. Your
brain automatically process by seeing a car or bike based on its speed and
distance that should we cross the road now or not. I assume we all have crossed
roads, so we all have quick decision making abilities. It’s just that, we do
not apply that thinking in our daily routines.
The small
decisions should be automatic and would be decided without spending much of
your time. How small? I assume you have the answers now. The only time you need
to spend thinking for decisions should be on the big decisions. How big? The
decisions which can change the course of your life or lifestyle. Decisions like
which career to choose, which college or company to join, which house or car to
buy, do I need to change the location for living etc. Take some time to come to
the conclusion of these kind of decisions unless off course you are in armed
forces where major life changing decisions are taken in split seconds, this
actually beyond scope of this article. To start with, among big decisions take
the easiest decisions first. If you have to decide between a Right and Wrong
choices, choosing the right one is the easiest thing unless, personally you
want to choose the wrong one. We will discuss more on this at next point.
Practice hard for hard choices in life– It’s easy to choose between best and worst options in
life. If you have to choose one of the option between, two best choices or two worst
choices then deciding that one choice may not be that easy.
Take a
scenario where you have to decide between more than one excellent job offers or
decision to choose between staying your old company who are ready to pay
everything or more, than your would be new company. You got admission in two of
the best colleges but both are far from your location or not getting the stream
you like. These are some real life scenarios which many of us had faced someday
or the other. How to make a choice or choices here?
As it’s a
big decision so you need to spend time to analyse the situation. Do not rush
into your decisions. Ask for time or take some time to analyse all these
choices or if time is a constraint run these quick check in your mind before
revealing your decision.
- First, chalk down both pros and cons of all the choices you have. Think in respect of lifestyle changes, role changes etc. and also how the selecting an option going to impact your immediate family or dependents. It’s like finding all the points about all the choices you have. Once you have pros and cons of all the choices, you will find making decision is no longer that difficult, what it seems earlier.
- If you still find this decision difficult, ask someone who has been in that situations before or has more knowledge or experience to guide you or help you in foreseeing the result of your decision. This person can be your mentor, boss, colleague, friend, spouse or parent. Listen to everyone but do what you think best for you. If needed, add there points to the pros and cons list but never make your decision based on their decisions or their point of view on the same choices. This will help you to extend your list of pros and cons for each choices. The more information you have about the choices, the more easily you will able take the decision.
- Do prepare to change your mind quickly and frequently based on facts and informations. If you have one day to choose between one of the choices say A, B and C. After the analysis over the day you will find B is the best suited option for you. Now just before declaring your choice as B, you find that C is the best option among these three, then do a quick scan to all the pros and cons about A, B and C, if your mind convince C is the best option select the option C rather than B which you had finalized originally. Similarly new development took off which was beyond your control and A seems strongest possible option and you are in a situation where you can still change your options then go for A. Decisions should be based on facts and information's only and information do change over time or may not come at proper time during your decision making process. So never be firm on your decisions unless you have all the necessary information to take that decision.
- Last but not least, Trust your instinct. I am not sure but every person do has this beast within, which is named as instinct. Unleash that beast. Somewhere somehow, your heart mind or body knows if you are taking a right or wrong decisions. Do give some brownie points to this instinct too while taking a hard decision.
Do Not Forget the Risk – Every major decisions you will take
have certain amount of Risk. While finding pros and cons, do find the Risk or
Worst possible scenario about each choices too. While making your final choice
do keep that in mind. Although the way corporates took Risk are entirely
different than the way any person took risk. No two person may have same Risk
taking capabilities. If your appetite of taking risk is high then less analysis
of the hard choices can give you the conclusion but if it’s low then you need
to go through each and every aspect of the choices you have, as I mentioned
earlier.
Own your decision – I do take my own decisions but all the
decisions I took did not turned out to be successful ones. I do worked out some
worst possible scenarios while taking decisions, but life took me by surprise
and landed me to a situation which I never predicted and turned out to be worse
than the worst possible scenario, I predicted. You cannot predict everything
and be prepare to fail, if things won’t worked out as expected. Own the success
so also the failures came out of the decisions you took. Just analyse the
failure and record it as lesson learnt and move on. Do not repent about the
decisions you made. Surely this will enhance your knowledge and experience to
make it right next time.
Do believe
in your ability and think what so ever the decisions you took is right
irrespective or its outcome. Be confident about taking decisions small or big
and at the end of the day you will find every decision you took was perfect or
close to perfect. In short decision making is all about confidence within. Ratan
Tata, said well about this confidence.
