How to make a difficult decision

Decisions shape our lives, but what happens when they're tough to make? Unravel the art of decision-making, where we delve into strategies and psychological insights that can guide you through the labyrinth of difficult choices.

Avoiding a decision is in fact a decision

It’s tempting but unwise to delay important choices. Grasp the nettle by using both systematic checklists and gut instinct

Decisions are complex because human beings are complex.
When faced with a difficult decision, it can be tempting to take the easy road and procrastinate
In fact, procrastination is not the refusal to decide, or to ‘freeze’ a decision in time, rather it is the active decision to remain undecided

How to make difficult decisions under pressure

Under stress, we tend to behave as if we are under time pressure even when we’re not

Pressure leads people to adopt a narrow vision of the situation at hand
Cognitive tunnelling: We tend to focus all our attention on the decision and ignore peripheral information, which may be vital
Good decision-makers judge when further delay will end up costing more than any decision they take
Make sure that your decision will not be driven by a fear of missing out
Ensure that you will not reject a promising candidate solely based on feelings of pride
Ask yourself the following five questions: Why are we taking this decision? What do we think will happen if we do? Is the benefit of this decision proportional to the risk? Do we have a common understanding and position on the situation?

Links & Books

The Art of Decision Making (2019) explores the deeper roots of our indecision and provides a step-by-step guide to improving our ability to decide, as well as improving the quality of our decisions

Joseph Badaracco, professor of business ethics at Harvard Business School, has formulated five questions that can help us shed new light on our most challenging choices
How to Think Like a Phenician
Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological reduction will transform your view of the world and your own consciousness

What to do

Identify the parts of yourself that want different things

Create distance from the decision
Psychological distance provides a sense of perspective that is a key component of effective decision-making
Adopt a childlike mindset
Think outside the box
If you are confronted with two or three options and you’re struggling to decide, what you might be missing is that there is at least one more creative option available to you