How To Make Better Decisions, Faster and End Up Happier

Photo: Ist das die Sonne? Day 45 by Arwen Abendstern

As a copywriter, I have a lot of decisions to make on a daily basis.

Should I use graphic A or B? Should start with a story or a strong benefit? Which headline should I use for this particular piece?

It used to take me a lot of time to make these crucial decisions. They’re crucial. So I should spend more time contemplating the choices right? What I did was I got myself educated. I gather as much choices as I can. Then I go back and forth on the potential benefits and disadvantages of a particular choice.

But at the end of the day, I realized that I never seemed to be satisfied with the decision I made. I always complete the project just before the deadline and end really beat up at the end of the day.

Not a good way to work.

3 Principles I apply when making decisions

So I went about studying how great leaders make crucial decisions on a daily basis and emerge so well off… everytime. And the end of 3 months or so of research, here’s what I learned.

Note: I realize that decision making is a huge field in itself. 3 months of research is definitely not enough to even cover the tip of the iceberg. But that’s what make these principles even more powerful. Just mastering the tip of the iceberg allows me to endlessly make better decisions, faster and end up happier.

The principles are these:

People don’t make decisions until they absolutely have to.
Spending more time contemplating do not yield better decisions.
More choices do not make people happier.

Let me explain.

First, you have to realize that you’ll never come to a decision unless there’s a deadline. Why do it now when you still have time right? So here’s what I do to significantly reduce the amount of time to make a decision.

I give myself a deadline.

So instead of dragging along, I get it over with. But wait a minute Andre… more time would allow me to think about it. That’s when principle number 2 comes in. You see, when it comes to decision making, more time spent does not mean higher quality results.

It’s like IQ. People with higher IQ does not necessarily mean they are smarter. No. Some people with extraordinarily high IQ never even made it into a university.

You see, as it turns out, your IQ only have to high enough. Once it’s above a certain threshold (115, if I remember correctly), other factors come into play that determines whether someone would achieve any sort of success in life.

In making decision, you only have to spend a enough time contemplating on a decision. Once you’ve reached a threshold, more time just isn’t going to help. Which brings me to principle number 3.

When most of us are in the process of making a decision, we tend to look for more alternatives. We want as much choice to choose from as possible. Let me give you an example.

My wife and I are considering moving recently, half way across the state to be somewhat closer to our parents. We first decided to move to Sydney, but after a bit of thinking, we decided to add a whole slew of suburbs to choose from. We even decided to consider moving our parents closer to us. Or perhaps hire a driver so they can visit us whenever they want to.

We added so much choice to the table, it became tiresome and stressful, going back and forth the benefits and problems of each alternative. More choice does not equal happiness!

If anything, it’ll make you despair! Because people don’t normally on what they’ve got. We focus on what we missed out on! The more choices you put on the table, the more you’re going to miss out on when you make a decision. And so you subconciously delay making a decision, until you absolutely have to. And when you do come to a decision, you’ll most likely tend to regret it... because you thought if only you have chosen another choice…

So here’s the bottomline. When in the process of decision making