How to Make the Right Decisions at the Right Time

When decisions are significant and require large commitment, do not think of things in the absolute. You don’t need to be 90% sure about a decision when that decision is the one that’s most likely to work out. Then, every decision is relative to all the other choices and even just being 60% sure about something is enough. Afterward, think about if there’s one piece of information that will change your mind and get it if you can. However, sometimes, you don’t have time to gather all the information you need so you just need to make a decision.

It’s important to have time limits for important decisions as you won’t be able to do anything if you always wait. Even deciding to not do anything is a decision that you should compare to other decisions you can make. It’s important to keep in mind the time limit to a decision and have the urgency to gather information within that time. Then, it’s important to make decisions that are enough to satisfy our needs and not necessarily maximize. If you try to maximize all your decisions, you are foregoing the value you can gain from making other decisions. When making decisions, also have a limit for what you consider depending on if factors have a high possibility of happening or high impact. It also helps to narrow your objectives for decisions so you can easily choose between a lot of choices.

Whatever decisions we come up with, we have to live with imperfect decisions made with imperfect brains. The best thing we can do is have a deliberate process of making decisions that we can hone as we make choices. If you’re making good enough decisions then that’s good enough since perfect decisions do not exist. As you practice making decisions, you learn more which gets you closer to making “perfect” decisions.

Once a decision plays out, we need to overcome hindsight bias as we never know what will happen. Most likely, we couldn’t have known better so it’s best to just learn from the decision and not beat yourself up. All that matters really with decisions is to make decisions to the best of your ability given the time you have. Then, it helps to write decisions and their rationale for it so that you can review what you could have known. Reviewing the rationale for the decision makes you realize that you could not have known better at the time.

Then, have compassion for people as they make decisions because even they are just trying their best. Chance, luck, and randomness come into play for decisions so good decisions can still turn bad. If ever people did make bad decisions, compassion is still appropriate so these people can improve on themselves. What should be judged is always the decision making process and not the person making the decision. More often than not, luck has something to do with our decisions but we do not credit that. There’s a range of outcomes with chances of them occurring but sometimes the unlikely just happens.

Source: Annie Duke