Better decision-making doesn’t have to be hard. Record your best ones like recipes
We all face forks on the road in life. But when we eventually make our choice and resolve the issue, rather than moving forward fully and thinking ahead, it’s wise for us to take time and record our decision-making process.
This is an idea I first came across from Ray Dalio in his book 'Principles’ (mandatory reading by the way!) but heard him revisit again on a podcast with Lex Fridman.
What I took from this idea was the fact that quality decisions are hard to make and they can drastically alter significant periods of your life depending on the quality of the decision made.
So when we do make good decisions, being able to understand how we made them can help us repeat the process and can massively increase our chances of making such quality decisions again.
The alternate approach of not recording your decision-making process leads to unnecessary thinking, time loss and potential emotional turbulence.
I know in the past I’ve had very similar problems I’ve faced both big and small, that I would have benefitted from using my personal principled based framework from.
A small example is for instance weighing up starting a particular hobby.
When I faced this scenario recently, I asked myself a certain number of questions that I thought were important to be clear on.
These ranged in factors such as my desire level, my deeper motivations, the cost of not acting, support I may access, following a structure, keeping a process orientated goal, starting small and having an end output based goal, among other things.
I was then eventually able to see a clear decision to be made which was true to my principles, and it was there were I started.
Getting clear on what are your principles, your personal rules are the foundation of a robust decision making framework. It sets the targets you want to hit. It says what you will and won’t do.
Some of my personal principles that I applied in this scenario were:
- To challenge myself and pursue growth of my capabilities in a small way.
- To pursue activities that are intrinsically motivating to me.
- To always end up with new learning no matter the experience.
- To pursue activities that are timeless and will be valuable to others decades from now.
There were more, but this is just a sample.
The point being, I had these principles in my mind that helped shape my questions and then provided the answer with ease. Other options I was weighing up beforehand simply no longer made sense.
The work for me now is to make sure this process is recorded. So the next time as in this example, I am looking to start a new hobby, I know exactly what questions to ask and what factors are being taken into consideration.
There will be far tougher decisions to make as I go of course and I will need to keep this process in mind once again.
The decision’s outcome may not go quite to plan it should be noted, but the decision making process cannot be doubted if you follow your own personal principled based approach.
So next time you face a similar scenario, don’t approach the problem from a blank slate. Apply your specific principles that matter to you, keep the recorded and save yourself the headache of reinventing a new thinking framework and use what worked.
