Basic decision making by humans follows a fairly similar pattern. This pattern can be made conscious and used as a tool, or it can be allowed to operate in the background, often with bad habits. Each phase of this pattern has its own pitfalls, which will be discussed. I bring up this topic in the hopes of helping you develop better strategies for
Basic decision-making by humans follows a relatively similar pattern. This pattern can be made conscious and used as a tool, or it can be allowed to operate in the background, often with bad habits. Each phase of this pattern has its pitfalls, which will be discussed. I bring up this topic in the hopes of helping you develop better strategies for making your decisions and getting towards the desired outcomes.
Decisions start with a trigger. Something arises in experience, internally or externally, that requires you to develop a new course of action than the ones you have been using. The significant errors at this point in a decision process are either starting the decision-making process before it needs to be made or procrastinating on starting the decision and missing opportunities for getting to your outcome. Working to become sensitive to when to wait and when to take action is critical.
Once the decision process has begun, you move towards the operation of the decision. Here, you collect data about the decision and evaluate your alternatives.
You need to use your senses to understand your alternatives to collect data. Regarding the standard Western division of senses, you need to see, hear, taste, touch, and smell what your options are. Unfortunately, our biases often lead to us collecting data irrelevant to the actual decision. Because there can only ever be a partial understanding of the situation, most decisions must be made with insufficient data. Fear of wrong decisions can create an additional problem of endless data collecting to forestall having to make any decision that you might ultimately find unfavorable.
There are single dimension alternatives of “yes/no” to a single action. There are two-dimensional alternatives, which often take the form of dilemmas., between two mutually exclusive courses of action. And there are three dimension alternatives with a broader spectrum of options. Additional dimensions can also be added, though very quickly beyond three alternatives, you start to enter into a problem of too many options, and thus, no action seems possible.
If you can get past the data collection period, some form of test for your decisions is needed. This can involve a small action linked to the final decision to gain feedback or some other way to see if the proposed action will lead toward the desired outcome. This is best done by generating something new related to the decision, which can be tested against your experience. If you do not find a match that looks like it will lead to your outcome by the testing phase, returning to one of the previous steps is the best course of action.
The best decision-makers develop the best tests for their outcomes. They also pursue a varied set of lived experiences from which they can draw better options and criteria for decision-making.
Setemheb 