Do you ever reflect on
When do I make better decisions?
What are my best decisions? What helped me to make those decisions?
How can I continue to make fewer decisions that I regret?
We are all wired to be influenced by our most recent decisions whether good or bad. Our mind chatter will continue to create emotions around a recent decision. A good decision increases our pride and self-confidence. A regrettable decision creates more chatter about what we could have done better and how to avoid similar decisions in the future. This can lead us to make a few more quick decisions to get back to a better decision-making process.
This app enables you to record, tag, and track your decisions for better awareness. By tagging your decisions appropriately you can reflect on how you make decisions.
To Get Started, think about logging following decisions:
What decisions are on Top of your mind and keeping you awake? It may be a career change or an investment decision.
What decisions do you need to make based on life events in the next 3 months
While documenting your decision, write down the following:
What triggered the decision? e.g. A new customer making a decision to buy from you can trigger making some hiring decisions. A financial loss may trigger a need to reduce planned investments
Is it time sensitive? Set Due Date based on when you need to decide.
Document Pros and Cons as Reasons that may influence your decision
While logging a decision, attach one or more of the following Tags
Tagging your decision will be useful to categorize them for future reference. While Type of decisions are centered around dimension of your life that you are dealing with, other tags can help you sharpen your thought process as well as reflect on those decisions.
Decision Type: Personal, Career, Work, Family, Money, Health, Spiritual, Travel, Hobby, Safety
Decision Timeline Impact: Long Term, Short Term, Routine, Time Sensitive
Decision Assessment immediately after taking the decision: Good, Bad, Financial Gain, Financial Loss, Hasty
Decision Retrospective (after a period of time): Hasty, Gone Bad, Regretting, Best
Tip: Leave Decision Taken Date blank to keep the decision open.
This activity will enable you to reflect on
What kind of decisions am I dealing with in my life?
How many of the decisions have different timeline impact?
What is the immediate assessment of the decision vs reflection after a period of time)
We don’t make decisions in isolation. We need a way to collaborate. It can be validating your thought process with a trusted family member, advisor or mentor. It can be socializing the pros and cons of taking a decision with a group of people who will need to support you after the decision is made. You will be able to do that soon using the app.
As you start documenting your decisions you will notice that there is a pattern to the decisions. What may be a difficult decision at some point will become a routine decision based on past experience.
e.g. You make a decision to invest some money in the stock market. The first time you make a decision, you are cautious and worried about financial Impact. Once you make a series of decisions with some good outcomes as well as some regrettable outcomes, your decision-making becomes mature and you can start to make decisions routinely
Sometimes we get tempted to take a decision without really thinking about long term consequences of that decision or impact on people. Both Good Decisions and Bad Decisions have impact on more than just you. Based on the level of influence you have impact of a decision can increase. Your personal or leadership legacy is judged based on your decisions and their impact. Writing down will enable you to think with clarity on the impact you will have.
Writing down a decision gives you more time to think. While trying to set a date when you want to take the decision is due, you can give yourself more time to think of Pros and Cons. Not all decisions are due immediately but your mind may create a false sense of urgency with biased information.
A documented decision need not lead to initially documented/planned decision. During the process of collecting inputs, documenting reasons with more clarity, you final decision can change and some times it can be a decision that is completely opposite of the initial decision. This is perfectly normal.
We all venture into new territories and need guidance to navigate with inputs from experts in the domain. While seeking inputs in a verbal conversations it is very easy to get biased by our own emotions than review inputs objectively. Written format of inputs on a decision give an opportunity to reflect when the mind is not emotional.
All leaders rely on their managers and indivdual contributors to take decisions within their purview. This delegation needs some coaching as well as process of review. Delegation Coach can be used as the tool to managers and individual contributors to log their decision along with pros and cons of the decision, seek inputs before they proceed with the decision. When delegation works effectively Leaders get time to focus on more strategic decision making than getting pulled into lot of operational decisions.
As you start to document and review your decision, you will be aware of your mental model of Decision Framework.