How to Decide

Important: GDPR Email Preferences

As you may already know, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will be coming into effect on 25th May 2018. We take your privacy seriously and we are working hard to ensure we comply with the new data protection laws. You can find out more about how we're doing this in our privacy policy on our website.

We want to make sure you continue to receive the latest newsletters, blogs, special offers and more.

As someone who has opted-in to receive our emails in the past, we’d like to give you this opportunity to confirm what you wish to receive:

Just so you know, if you don’t let us know what kinds of emails you want to receive from us, we’ll stop emailing you on the 24th May 2018 - you'll be missing out!

You are of course free to change your mind at any time – just follow the link at the bottom of any of our emails.

What to do when you can't decide

When you are faced with a decision to make, here is the best way to approach it:

1. State the decision in form of a 'yes or no' question.
2. List all the reasons for; then all the reasons against.
3. Keep asking 'What else?'
4. Always add additional lines to stimulate the mind.
5. Decide a weighting system that gives enough flexibility.
6. Be honest and objective.
7. Add up the numbers and the decision is made.

1. State the decision in form of a 'yes or no' question.

The first step is to reduce the decision to a single line question, which may be answered with a simple Yes or No.

Wording the initial question is the vital step to making a good decision.

Ensure the question is worded in a balanced manner.

Be sure that you do NOT imply a bias in the way you word the question. For example:

Should we destroy our future by doing X or should secure our future by NOT doing X? Is a biased question.

A non-biased version would be: Should we Do-X or Not-Do-X?

2. List all the reasons for and all the reasons against.

List all the reasons for and against the decision.

Ensure that you do not repeat the same point, simply by rewording a single reason in many ways. For example:

I should buy a bigger car, because I need a bigger boot space.

I should buy a bigger car, because I don't want to struggle with carrying my luggage.

3. Keep asking 'What else?'

Keep listing all the reasons for affirming the decision, until your brain runs dry of reasons, or you end up repeating yourself.

4. Always add additional lines to stimulate the mind.

Keep adding unfilled spaces to your list to stimulate your mind to think of more ideas.

5. Decide a weighting system that gives enough flexibility.

We suggest you score all the reasons out of 100.

• 100 means maximum importance.
• 001 means minimum importance.

Score out of 100 every reason FOR X; then every reason for NOT X.

6. Be honest and objective.

Don't cheat yourself by skewing your scores to fit a predetermined opinion, that you had in the back of your mind, before you started the analysis.

7. Add up the numbers and the decision is made.

When you have weighted each reason for both sides of the decision, add up the totals and the decision is made.

Decision Maker App

Our free Decision Maker App will guide you through the above process and help make you make your decision.

I want to decide right now, take me to the Decision Maker App!

Your Comments

Blog Email Subscription

Do you want to receive an email whenever we post a new blog?
The blogs contain article 5-10 minutes long - ideal for reading during your coffee break!
If you wish to sign up for this, please click here.

Further Reading in Personal Effectiveness

• Personal Effectiveness Training
  Personal Effectiveness Training Personal effectiveness is a measure of your ability to make good progress in the face of difficulties. Personal effectiveness is a measure of your efficiency, meaning, your ability to create maximum value, in the minimum time and effort. Your future prosperity depends on your ability to develop ever...
  Read Article >
• How to make better decisions
  How to make better decisions Imagine how wonderful your life would be if, in every single situation, you always made brilliant decisions. Imagine what wonderful things you could achieve if you always made brilliant decisions. And on the other hand, just think what would happen to the person who always made...
  Read Article >
• What does it take to Develop Personal Effectiveness?
  Personal effectiveness is a measure of your ability to make good progress.
  Read Article >
• How to be more successful
  How to be more successful Because of the law of cause and effect, there are causes for everything. Everything that occurs has definite causes. If you want something specific to occur, then you must affect the specific causes. If success is what you wish to achieve you must affect the specific...
  Read Article >
• How ARE you doing? What an excellent question
  How are you doing? What an excellent question Last week, my friend greeted me with the question: "Hi, Chris, How are you doing?" The thought struck me "THAT is an important question": "How are you doing?" It is an excellent question I decided to do an experiment and note the various...
  Read Article >