Techniques for Making Faster Decisions

November 12, 2007

Okay, so we all know that life seems to be moving faster and faster each day. We’re getting better at taking in more information, or at least getting better at finding more information, the taking-it-all-in part is a whole other article. With everything we manage to shovel into our consciousness everyday, it makes a lot of sense that many people are looking for ways to make faster decisions. The faster we can shovel it all into its appropriate place, the faster we can stop shoveling. The funny part about decision making is that it’s nowhere near as hard as many people seem to think. When we find ourselves at a fork in the road, we instill each choice with equal importance in the hopes of not caring about the outcome. We make ourselves believe that either choice will be fine, when the reality is that we already know which road we want to take and, more importantly, we know which road will disappoint us.

How many times have you been faced with a choice, only to shrug your shoulders and say, ?Either one is fine with me?? We do it all the time and the reason we do stems from not wanting to be wrong. We, being smarter than Pavlov’s dogs, have figured out how to create not reaction at all. We fear a poor decision more than we desire a good decision and therefore we lie and claim not to care either way. The truth is that we do care, every time, without fail. No matter what choice you are presented with, you will always have a preference, however slight it may be. To make faster decisions you must become better at sensing this preference.

The secret to faster decisions is that you already know the decision you want to make, you’ve just got to let yourself make it.

1.Flip the Coin ? yes, I said it, flip a coin. It isn’t what you think, though. You’re not supposed to do what the coin says, that’s actually not the point of this method. The point is to see which answer pleases you the most. The great thing about flipping the coin is that it lets you know how you feel about your decisions. Let’s say you flip and it comes up Heads. If you feel that pang of disappointment, you know how you feel. You’d rather have chosen Tails, problem solved, now choose Tails. The great thing about this method is that it isn’t as completely arbitrary as it seems. You’re not flipping the coin to get an answer, you’re flipping to see how you really feel. Who needs soul-searching or meditation? All you need is to find your gut reaction. Sound strange? Give it a try, the minute the coin gives you the answer you didn’t want, you’ll feel it.

The answer, you see, already lies in your subconscious. We don’t readily see it because we’re afraid of our decisions. When standing at that fork in the road we’re too afraid that one of those possible roads will lead us into total disaster, while the other will take us to total success. This is an incorrect belief, but that’s not the point. Rather than taking the responsibility for the decision and hoping for the best, we prefer to claim ignorance, throw up our hands and stand at the crossroads indefinitely, or until one of the roads chooses us. We claim that we prefer no road at all, either will be fine. The truth is that we are drawn by our ?instincts? or ?gut feelings? or ?intuition,? or whatever you want to call it, down one path or another. When our minds are clouded by fear, however, we block off this communication so we can no longer feel where we are being led.

Using a coin flip, you can open up the door to this communication again. If you flip the coin incorrectly, you’ll know it. An answer you didn’t want will bring a stinging feeling in the pit of your stomach and a longing to have seen the other side of the coin. At that point, you’ll know what path you truly wish to take. Put the coin in your pocket, trust in your feelings and start walking down that path.

2.Use a Pendulum ? This method may be a bit ?out there? for some people, but don’t worry, you aren’t contacting spirits or anything, this is just a variation of the coin technique. Like the coin, the answers you get are your answers and steam from your own mind. All you need to do is buy or make a pendulum. Just tying a metal washer to a string will work just fine. Hang the pendulum straight down over your free hand, holding the string with the thumb and index finger of the other hand. Now assign movements for ?Yes? answers and ?No? answers. Say, a clockwise spin will indicate a yes answer, while up and down movements will signal no answers.

Now simply begin asking yourself questions and watch what happens. The idea behind this is that the minute muscle movements created by your nervous system will answer based on your subconscious reaction instead of a conscious deliberation. You won’t feel the muscles moving, the movements are far to small to be felt, but you will begin to see the pendulum swing based on the answer you wish to see. This is one of the best ways to find out how you feel about a certain answer. You’ll probably find, more often than not, that an unclear answer becomes crystal clear the moment you ask it with a pendulum in your hand because you begin to interpret your own reactions more keenly.

I know it seems ?new-agey? and strange, but give it a try, it’s actually pretty enlightening and the quickest and easiest way I can think of to actually communicate with your subconscious mind.

3.Set a Time Limit ? Give yourself a deadline to keep your pontificating to a minimum. As Malcolm Gladwell so aptly pointed out in Blink, too much information can actually hinder our decision making abilities. What you want to have is the bear bones of your situation and a good reading on how you feel about it emotionally. I’m a big proponent that our emotions are like our job approval ratings. The better we’re doing, the better we feel. Given this, I’m also a big supporter of using your emotions to help you make decisions. If you’re first reaction to a certain choice is one of trepidation, then avoid that choice. Your instincts are usually correct, so learn to listen to them. To help you do this, set yourself a time limit for making decisions. Some people don’t let themselves go beyond 60 seconds, for others it’s 30 seconds, or even 5 minutes. The time limit is up to you, but I wouldn’t go longer than five minutes and, truthfully, I’d try to keep it under two.

You see, humans are funny. We have the hardest time trusting ourselves. We’ve been duped into thinking that we’re lower lifeforms bumbling around on earth and therefore we aren’t good at things like running our own lives. That’s why we create gods and demons to wreak havoc in our experiences?it’s easier to blame something you can’t see. The truth of the matter is that there isn’t anything wrong your ability to run your own the life, the problem comes when you get in your own way. When you start second guessing yourself, you’re getting in the way of your own success. Changing your mind based on better information is one thing, second guessing yourself out of the fear of being wrong, is something else entirely. Giving yourself a shorter time limit makes it harder for you to second guess yourself. Come up with your answer, make sure you feel comfortable with that answer and stick to it. Keep that time limit short and strict. Never let yourself go back on your initial decision unless you have a damn good reason to do so and fear is never a damn good reason to do anything.

4.Play the Hand You’re Dealt ? In other words, when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. I see too many people who get trapped in undesirable situations simply because they refuse to get themselves out of it. They could begin to move forward and fix whatever problem they’ve encountered, or whatever decision looms ahead, but instead they choose to dwell on the occurrence of the problem.

Let’s say you lose your job and you feel it has happened rather unfairly. You spend the vast majority of your time being annoyed at loosing your job and perhaps at your boss for firing you. You send out a few resumes but only haphazardly as you aren’t incredibly interested in a new job, you’re still hurt from losing the last one. Every time you look at your dwindling bank account, you think of how unfairly this position was thrust upon you and it only makes you angrier. Or perhaps you spend the majority of your time thinking about how much you liked your old job and fretting over whether or not you’ll find another one like it. The problem with this type of thinking is that it dwells on what cannot be changed. No matter how long and hard you brood or worry, you will never change what has already occurred. You must begin to play the hand you were dealt by actively pursuing another job.

This type of reaction tends to show up in the form of words like ?unfair.? We shout that it is unfair that we should be faced with this or that situation. In reality, fairness doesn’t matter a bit. It may not be fair that you lost your job, but the fairness of the experience doesn’t change the occurrence of it. Instead of dwelling on things like fairness or whether or not you even like the decision, start dwelling on how you will move through it and into something better. If you can begin to look at the cards in your hand and match them to what you’ve been dealt, you can begin to maneuver yourself into a better situation. The metaphor aside, look to the future, not the past, it will save you an infinite amount of time when it comes decision making.

The key to making faster decisions is to start trusting yourself. Start realizing that your instincts and your desires are not wrong and they will not steer you in the wrong direction. Start realizing that the fork in the road that you find yourself faced with is hardly ever a road that you can’t come back from. Most decisions are not permanent. If you choose unwisely, go back and fix it and try again. Start putting less importance on the choices to be made and put more importance on your own feelings and desires. So often the only reason we make decisions slowly is because we feel inadequately suited to make them at all.

Make the choice that your decisions have got to be made. They’ve got to be made by you and there is no one else better suited to decide what you want. Make your decisions quickly, confidently and efficiently. The more you practice the above techniques, the more keenly you will identify your initial instincts and the less you’ll need any technique at all to make the right choices for your life.

Posted in Being Proactive, Determination, Emotions, Fear, Goal Setting, Success, The Mind