Today At A Glance

  • Deep Dive: 3 Ideas For Making Better Decisions

reading time: 3 minutes


3 Ideas For Making Better Decisions

Idea 1: Gather Information

You need good information if you want to make good decisions. That’s because, without information, you have no basis from which to make your decision. For example, consider how effective an auto mechanic would be if they knew nothing about your car.

You can gather information by researching, taking a course, or asking questions.

Idea 2: Filter

After you gather your information, the next step is filtering. Filtering is important for a few reasons.

  1. Not all information is relevant
  2. Not all information is important
  3. Too much information tends to be overwhelming, which clouds your thinking

Here are three ideas you can use to filter information.

1. Keep the goal in mind. If any information does not directly contribute to the decision you are making, get rid of it.

2. Ignore the finer details when possible. You don’t always need the finer details. At times all you need to make a good decision are broad concepts. Knowing this, you can save yourself a lot of time by filtering out the finer details whenever they are not needed.

3. Validate your sources. There’s certainly no shortage of bad information. Bearing this in mind, make sure you vet all of your data before adding it to your pool of knowledge.

Idea 3: Don’t Hesitate

One of the worst decisions you can make is deciding not to decide at all. I made this mistake after my first business failed. Because I wanted to be sure I wouldn’t fail again, I spent months being indecisive about what second business I should start.

Here’s how you can avoid this problem. Know that at any given point in time, you have a given amount of information. If you want to keep your life moving forward, you can’t wait for perfection or absolute certainty. If you do, you’ll get nowhere.

Instead, you have to make the best decision you can with the information you have. If you make a mistake, that’s ok. That’s because failure often provides the information you need to succeed in the future.

Want More?

My video and article on decision-making are full of additional information.

The full-length versions include:

  • Five more ideas for making good decisions
  • A discussion about when using a decision-making framework is harmful
  • Lots of helpful examples and diagrams

Be sure to watch or read to learn more decision making.

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