Easier Decision-Making: Conduct Experiments

By Leo Babauta A surprising amount of our day is filled with decisions: what to do with an email, what to do with clutter, opening paper mail, grocery shopping, whether to go out with friends or stay home, whether to add someone as a friend, whether to take a job, to move, to take a class, to go on a vacation, and so on. And a good amount of stress can come about from all of those decisions, because many times we don’t have the information we need to make a good decision. How can we make a choice when we don’t know the outcome of each choice? If the choices had clear outcomes, we could just weigh them and decide. But most of the time, the outcomes aren’t clear. So how do we decide? Most of the time, people don’t decide. They put off deciding, which is why inboxes are full and clutter piles up and life choices are postponed and stress grows. But here’s a simple method that works for me: See decisions not as final choices, but experiments. The anxiety (and paralysis) comes when people are worried about making the perfect choice. And worried about making the wrong choice. Those are two outcomes that aren’t necessary to make a decision, because if we conduct an experiment, we’re just trying to see what happens. With an experiment, you run a test, and see what the results are. If you don’t get good results, you can try another option, and run another test. Then you can see what the outcomes of the choices are (the info you d...
Source: Zen Habits - Category: Life Coaches Authors: Tags: Productivity & Organization Source Type: blogs