Great Time Management - Decision Making
How Great Time Management Gets You Started
Feeling good about Decision Making ability comes quite easily for some but for others making a decision is like pulling teeth. If you fit the later description then let me help you become more comfortable with your decision making ability. Use the following tips to increase your confidence in the decisions you make and improve your decisiveness.
- Own Your Decision Making Ability:
- Be willing to accept responsibility for the results of the decisions you make.
- Feel confident and pleased with your ability to decide.
- Recognize for most decisions you make no one will remember them in a couple of days or a week anyway. Don’t stress out.
- Start Simply With Decision Making:
- Identify areas of life where you struggle, second-guess or procrastinate when needing to make a decision.
- Select one life area with multiple decision opportunities each day that are not life threatening or critical to functionality.
- Estimate how long it takes to make decisions now and practice making them in two minutes or less.
- Information for Decision Making:
- Identify the information you think you need to make a good decision.
- Compare the information you have to what you think you need.
- If you can attain the information you need but don’t have within the two minute time limit get it. If not make the best decision you can without it.
- If the decision is critical or life threatening postpone it until you have more time. This shouldn’t happen very often.
- Evaluate Decision Making Outcomes:
- Evaluate the impact and results of the two minute decision making exercise.
- Was anyone hurt or harmed in any way? Did anyone complain obsessively? If not skip steps C & D.
- What was the harm? If they were truly treated unfairly then observe what you could have done differently to have achieved a better result. Apologize. Tell the person you will not do it again and move on.
- Did someone complain obsessively? If their complaint was real then evaluate your decision and determine what you could have done better. Apologize. Tell the person you will not do it again and move on. If you indeed treated them fairly and they complained anyway, forget about it and move on.
- Compliment yourself on your ability to be decisive and try this exercise again tomorrow with improved results.
In time you will be comfortable making decisions in this area of life and when you are move to another area of life. Using this formula begin practicing your decision making methods in that area.
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Article by John Golden