Decision making

I came across this really awesome article on relieving indecisiveness:

How to, Maybe, Be Less Indecisive (or Not) – The New York Times

Here are the five strategies the article suggests for spending less time agonizing over decisions:

1. Go for good enough
2. Outsource your decisions
3. Employ the ‘90 percent rule’
4. Create thought experiments
5. Remember, it’s just a dot

I’ll let you read the article which explains all of these in detail.

The first and the last particularly resonated with me. With all the information we have available to us today it’s tempting to want to be a perfectionist and try to get all the information before making a decision. The reality is that you’ll never have all the information, especially for tough decisions.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

One of the most important things for recovering un-deciders to realize — and accept — is that they will never have all the information. Referencing Steve Jobs’s famous line that you can connect the dots only looking backward, Mr. Urban urged anyone frozen by indecision to simply pick a “good next dot,” saying, “It doesn’t have to be perfect — it’s just a dot along the way.”

Dr. Schwartz would agree. “The privileged among us live in a world where mostly we’re choosing among really good options,” he said. “And the difference between really good and really, really good is not worth your effort to discern, even when the stakes are high.”

I’ve been working on applying these concepts into my life more and going for “good enough”. It’s already been helpful, especially for making decisions on what to eat. 🙂

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Here’s a related podcast on essentialism with one of the people quoted in the article: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?i=1000427317473