The majority of decisions I’ve made so far in my life can be labeled as good. And this isn’t due to some ‘secret’ strategy or me being a genius.
So, in this post, I’m going to tell you how I go about making good decisions.
Figure out what I want to accomplish
The first thing I do when considering a decision is figuring out what I want to accomplish by making this decision and why.
If I don’t have a strong reason why behind the decision, I shut it down immediately. Having a weak reason behind a decision has been responsible for a lot of my bad decisions.
Examples of a weak reason:
- I’m bored or feel like I have nothing else better to do
- I have nothing to lose (you always have something extra you can lose)
- It’s easy (easy doesn’t mean beneficial)
Identify the best-case scenario
Once I know what I want to accomplish and why I want to accomplish it, I look at the best-case scenario.
The easiest way for me to identify the best-case scenario is to ask myself this question:
If I give this decision my all, what’s the best outcome that I believe can happen?
The answer to that question is what I run with as my best-case scenario.
Identify the worst-case scenario
Since I know the best-case scenario, I want to also learn the worst-case scenario. This allows me to look at this decision from 2 different perspectives.
Similar to the best-case scenario, the easiest way for me to identify the worst-case scenario is to ask myself a question:
If this decision goes horribly wrong, what do I stand to lose?
The answer to that question is what I run with as my worst-case scenario.
Make Adjustments
Sometimes my best-case and worst-case scenarios are all I need to decide what I should do. However, in some situations, I need to make adjustments. Here’s an example.
Before I made the decision to waterproof the foundation of my wet basement, I identified the best-case and worst-case scenarios.
The best-case scenario was that I completed the project quickly and successfully saved thousands of dollars. The worst-case scenario was that I was killed due to the dirt in the trench collapsing and burying me alive.
Saving thousands of dollars sounds nice until you add the potential downside of death. So, in this situation, I made adjustments until I was comfortable with the worst-case scenario.
I researched how to prevent the trench from potentially killing me. The solution was basically to spend more time and money.
Now that I have that information, I adjusted my best-case and worst-case scenario.
The new best-case scenario was that I completed the project in a reasonable amount of time and saved less money than I initially thought. The new worst-case scenario was that I completed the project but took longer than expected and spent more money than if I had hired professionals.
With these adjustments, I was able to create a worst-case scenario that I was comfortable with (at the expense of my best-case scenario).
So, what I want you to take away from this section is that you have flexibility in your decision-making. You don’t have to settle for high-reward/high-risk. You can probably lower the reward while lowering the risk at the same time.
Make The Decision
For me, I find that the longer I spend analyzing a decision and making adjustments, the more likely I am to abandon it completely. So, once I have all the information I need to make a good decision – I make the decision.
I don’t worry about making the ‘best’ decision. I believe that when you focus on making the best decision, you miss a lot of good decisions that aren’t much different than the ‘best’.
As long as the decision I make is ‘good’ enough, I’m happy.
