The Psychology Behind Making Difficult Decisions

From the time we wake up in the morning to the time we go to bed, we are always making decisions. Which clothes to wear, what to eat – everything is a decision. We tire ourselves with decisions.

It’s important for us to pause for a second and understand our decision making process.

First of all, how many decisions are really important in our day-to-day lives? Very few. Just understanding this concept will make your life easier.

Our attention is limited, so we need to focus on decisions that have a huge impact on our lives and not spend too much time on decisions that are reversible or have no impact on our lives.

The way to deal with small recurring decisions is to make rules or systems so that you don’t have to spend energy making the same decision every day. For example, you can make a rule that you go to the gym every day. You don’t need to make that decision again and again. You can make similar rules or systems for my other parts of life (your meal, your clothes, etc.). The idea is to free up your mental space.

For non recurring small decisions, if you know what to do, you just need to move ahead with it. If you delay taking actions, it will keep taking your mental space.

Now coming to important decisions, the best mental model is long term vs. short term thinking. I remember someone saying that all bad decisions are rooted in short term thinking – that is so true. Once you take a long term view of any situation, you make better decisions.

Another mental model I have is of positioning, which is a subset of long term thinking. How will my decision position me – does it make life easier tomorrow or harder tomorrow? I choose decisions that will make my life easier. Also, another aspect of positioning, which I learned from Kevin Kelley, is that I choose an option that opens up more options.

So to recap, create systems/rules for daily decisions so that you don’t have to spend energy on these activities and take a long term approach before making other important decisions in your life.

Here is an interesting project you may want to check out for long term thinking.

Reference: Excellent Advice For Living by Kevin Kelley