Our Decision Making Process

We make hundreds of decisions every day. Many are small, do I jump out of bed when the alarm sounds, or hit the snooze bar and enjoy five more minutes of sleep? Do I eat a proper breakfast and hope that traffic will be light on the way to work, or do I grab a cup of coffee and a donut as I rush out the door? Some decisions are more important; should I inform my supervisor that our agreed upon deadline is now in jeopardy? And some are absolutely critical, should I drive into that water flowing over the road?

How do you determine the “goodness” of a decision? If you sleep in and still make it to work on time because you ran a few yellow (red) lights, or choose to ignore the missed deadline and no one seemed to notice, or drive through the water without harm...do these outcomes make the decisions good? Absolutely not!

Another great example may be distracted driving. If I text while driving home tonight after work and make it home unscathed (no accidents), the decision was bad, the outcome was good. If I make the decision NOT to text during my drive home, but through no fault of my own, I am involved in an accident, the decision was good…the outcome was bad.

The “goodness” of a decision, and the result of the decision must stand alone. Unfortunately, the human mind is not designed to make such delineations, not intuitively anyway. To make matters worse, the vast majority of use have never received any formal training in decision making. We all had to take algebra, English composition, and perhaps chemistry…but nary a class on decision making.

Make your decisions / choices based upon what you believe is the right course of action. Do not be lulled into making bad decisions because the outcome in the past was (luckily) good. You may successfully drive through the swiftly running water this day, or text without causing an accident…but rest assured, one day your bad decisions will catch up to you.

Fortunately, the opposite is true as well. Do not allow a bad result from a good decision deter you from making sound decisions in the future. Good decisions vastly improve your chances for a good result!