We make hundreds of decisions, big and small, every day. Often these decisions are made about life-changing opportunities, but many of us don’t know how to evaluate the elements needed to make a decision to get a good result, says Mike Whitaker, author of “The Decision Makeover: An Intentional Approach to Living the Life You Want.”
Decisions are not all the same
Successful people distinguish between small, medium and big decisions. “Small decisions affect you for a day, like what you wear and what you eat,” Whitaker says. “Mid-level decisions have impacts on your life for about a year, they’re decisions like deciding to go back to school or accept a roommate. They influence your life, but they are not moments of confrontation or leaving wounds. ”
Bigger decisions are made once or twice a year and successful people use their goals to orient themselves towards the right choice. Knowing your goals is critical, and Whitaker says successful people have four strategies that help them clearly define what they want.
- They maintain five main goals and stay focused on themselves.
- They identify the highest priority and give it greater weight when making decisions.
- They focus on the goal and the decision, treating this decision more carefully.
- They appreciate direction, identifying the benefits of continuing to move in the right direction.
Dealing with the Consequences of Bad Decisions
We all make bad decisions, but the course of successful people resolves faster, says Whitaker. “Most people don’t act; it’s painful,” he says. “When successful people have enough evidence that they made a wrong decision, they look for nothing else. They are willing to close a business, for example, and go in a different direction. They fail fast, move on, and then don’t talk about it anymore. ”
The key is to always get back to your goals. “I call it the big reset,” Whitaker says. “Everyone is walking with the mistakes they have made and almost everyone has made a wrong decision in an important category. You don’t want to get to the middle of your career and think, ‘That’s not where I thought I was.’ Nothing is more deflating. What do you do about it? ”
Avoid pitfalls
It is important to recognize when the ability to make good decisions is compromised by factors such as not having the necessary information or not being sure that it is correct. This happens more and more often within companies as the information comes from an increasingly large amount of data to be processed.
The right tools can help you make the best decisions
If the same decisions are made by an ever-increasing amount of data, then the processing of this data also requires ever-increasing capacities. If before you had 10 orders per month to manage you could do it on a simple Excel, now that you have 100 or 1,000 you need more advanced tools. These tools, which usually replace what becomes a proliferation of Excel sheets, help save a lot of time in researching and updating data and verifying the reliability of information.
By saving this time and having reliable information available, you can focus your time on the goals to be achieved. In this way, successful people achieve their goals faster and with better results and tend to receive promotions more quickly.
The 5 risks of making decisions on Excel
Learn about the risks of making decisions on Excel sheets and how to avoid them in the following guide. Download it for free below:
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