The Art of Decision Making

It was a bright, cold winter morning on December 10, 2004. With the sun rising high in the sky, I was unaware of what life had in store for me. My friend (and now business partner), Jeet, had just come from the US to explore business opportunities in India. After having a delicious breakfast that my wife lovingly served, we sat in my living room discussing business ideas we could potentially start together. Being college mates and close friends since '93, we always used to dream about creating something together someday. As time passed, we went separate ways in life and fell out of touch for nine years. I kept telling myself that those were mere immature commitments that may never happen until one day in Sep '04, when Jeet called me. He said, "Let's start something together, Sandeep," and here we are, sitting across from each other in the living room, creating a future together.

At this point in 2004, I was doing a real estate business, running an education institute, and partially involved as a passive partner in a restaurant back in my hometown of Bikaner, a small city in the western Indian state of Rajasthan. Finally, after many years, Jeet and I met, and we kept four days to discuss and create a business plan. Within 30 minutes of our initial conversation, we decided that we would start a real estate business together; I would wind up my education business to free up time, hand over full responsibilities of the restaurant to my business partner, and move to Jaipur, where we could play bigger games in the business world.

In just 30 minutes, Jeet and I came up with the life-changing decisions of moving towns and closing businesses to chase our dreams. It sounds crazy, right? Well, when I look back, it does seem crazy to see the two of us taking such huge risks that changed my life forever, but it just clicked. Everything started falling into the right place the moment we decided to take action. What was planned to be a four-day brainstorming business meeting took just 30 mins. The remaining days that followed were spent reviving ourselves on a cricket field, having fun!

This example is an excellent reference to "decision making." Whether it is about a career, relationship, health & fitness, or any other area in our day-to-day life, we always have choices in front of us. And out of those choices, we need to DECIDE the best one that can produce the desired outcomes. Understandably, many of us find ourselves in a situation where we cannot convince ourselves of any decision despite all the thinking, calculation, permutations & combinations involved. So how do we make effective decisions? What does the recipe look like for people who are effective decision-makers? And most importantly, what makes some people so effective in decision making?

The?one thing?that is fundamental to decision-making is what we are committed to in life. When I reflect on my journey, I always wanted to make a difference and do something bigger in life. I knew my friend for quite some time in my sharing above, and I believed in his capabilities and dedication towards life. Our synergies matched when we were in college. I always trusted that Jeet and I could be a great team to work together and achieve our dreams. Unquestionably, this decision seemed scary and uncomfortable as numerous risks were involved. However, I feel good that I allowed my gut feeling to take control of my choice. Although I did not have the past data to support that belief at the time of decision-making, I went with it anyway.

That brings us down to exploring what gut feeling exactly is? Most of us think of a gut feeling as an abstract thought that comes out of thin air and is not something we can rely on because of its subjective nature. We constantly search for data to make decisions while not giving much importance to our innate senses. Yet, a question might arise after reading this "Why?" The reason is that the data makes us comfortable and shows a path to do better moving forward. Undoubtedly, data is good to look at, learn from the past, and use as a reference.

But, here is an interesting question: "At any given point in time, how do we know that the data we collected is good enough to make a decision?" Well, there is no such standard/metrics to base our approach entirely on data or to know for sure how much data is enough to produce better results. Moreover, as data is always driven by the past, the future will be another impression of the past, maybe a little better, but not entirely transformative that we may be looking for in the first place.

Let me share another example to help you identify the importance of gut feeling in decision-making. I meet a handful of people in life who want to become entrepreneurs, and they ask me some very concrete questions. However, the thing is that very few of those people actually try it out. The data will never tell us whether and when we will be ready. This decision can only be made by our own belief, or in other words, our gut feeling. Whether it works out or not, in the end, is secondary but even taking that risk to fulfill our dreams is worth it.?

Life itself is risky and uncertain, but if we are genuinely committed to making something good happen in our lives and chasing our dreams, we should give our lives to it.

Now you must be asking, if the gut feeling is so important in decision-making, why do people often end up making unproductive choices? From my personal experience, I have identified three reasons:?

Our Commitment to Life:?We never declare our commitment openly in life. Unless and until we openly declare what we are up to in life, we will not gain enough clarity that could help us create our roadmap. For example, the commitment to fulfill our dream could exist in the back of our mind, which eventually produces a gut feeling. However, we'd end up suppressing our intuition more often than not in the absence of clarity. Finding and openly declaring our commitment helps us keep ourselves accountable, stay on track, and become the driving force behind our decisions and actions. More specifically, it provides us with the direction that helps us bring ourselves back on track when the going gets tough in life.

The Longer the Decision-making, the Weaker the Decision is:?From my perspective, there is no "right" time to make a decision. Moreover, we must realize that taking too much time would negatively influence the decision-making process. We could always look around, introspect, and see the frequency of such occurrences. I am not saying that data is not helpful or that we should be reckless in decision-making. Nevertheless, there could be a point in our entrepreneurial journey when we realize that more data won't help, but we still continue to collect more data to make it perfect. But in actuality, this action only delays the next course of action for us. Did we ever stop and think for a moment - where this data is coming from? Well, it all comes from our past, while the decision is always about the future. Though the past data can be helpful in a few areas, it cannot decide how the end would be. In fact, when we are too dependent on past data, how will our future be different from the past we have lived so far?

Cost-benefit Analysis after Decision-making:?"Have I made the right decision?", "What if it doesn't work?", "Maybe the other choice was the better one." These thoughts often come to our minds after making a decision. Evidently, it is required that we do a cost-benefit analysis before making the decision. But if we do the cost-benefit analysis after the decision is made, we'll create a perfect recipe for disaster, and we'll find ourselves in a vicious circle. A decision can only be effective if we are willing to give one hundred percent of our lives to the decision—no looking back whatsoever. Doing a cost-benefit analysis after making a decision will hamper the commitment we made in the first place. Eventually, we will deviate from our goal the moment we start facing minor obstacles.

Most of the decisions that worked throughout my journey were made without a second thought, and those decisions were always based on my gut feeling. But, as I stated above, I could have easily missed the opportunity to live my dream had I not trusted my instincts.

When we started an IT company in 2009, all the market data pointed out that it was the worst time for the IT industry to flourish. It was subprime crisis time. The IT industry was believed to be doomed already, and the timing was not right to start a new company. Jeet was all set to leave his full-time job at HP to start on this journey with me and three other co-founders of In Time Tec, who also came out of their comfortable corporate jobs.

We started InTimeTec together based on our gut feeling that we would make it through the odds. And we did! Despite all the challenges, we created an IT company that is now one of the fastest-growing companies in the US as part of the INC 5000 for the past six years, a successful example of creating abundance for us and the people around us.?Even though it has not been an easy journey, I found peace and calmness within me as I lived those experiences.

We can only connect the dots by looking back, and when I look back in time, I find that our gut feeling is the only thing that can take us into the future.?

Decision-making?is nothing but an ability to make a decision. To produce extraordinary results, we need to declare things in the future and give our life to a decision rather than merely acting on the data generated from the past. Moreover, once we are going through the process, it becomes vital that we learn from the process, adjust our actions, reinforce our commitment and repeat the process.

To conclude, I would say that we make decisions every day from dawn to dusk, and the more intuitively we move, the better we are at the end of the day. To summarize, I would recommend these critical steps to practice if you want to take your decision-making skills to the next level:?

1. Declare/reinforce your commitment
2. Operate from self-belief?
3. Listen to your gut feeling while making decisions
4. Give your word - Decide and Declare
5. Give your life to the decision
6. Learn from the process and go back to Step 1

What is riskier than our life itself? The future is always unknown by design. Believe that the life we are looking for is possible, and keep making decisions followed by actions. People who practice this approach live their life their way. Regardless of the outcomes, if you give your life to something, you will always get what you deserve.