Hard decision? How to ensure you get it right

Try the “sit with” method, and don’t always dismiss your gut instinct.

 

In the course of a single day, the average adult makes around 35,000 decisions, according to scientists and authors Barbara Sahakian and Jamie LaBuzetta. Most will be subconscious, many will require an ounce of thought, and some a few minutes.

 

But the toughest decisions often get left to last, and sometimes are never even made. Why? First, they’re emotionally difficult – there’s no easy answer. And second, in a hyperconnected world, it’s easy to feel like you’re making headway by dealing with the simple, rather than important, decisions first. 

 

And given the demands of the workplace, decision-making can be even more difficult. It can take 22 minutes to return to your previous level of output on a task if you stop to check your email, for example. So how can you embrace the tough decisions that invariably get sidelined?

 

Economist and author of Eyes Wide Open Noreena Hertz has a simple but crucial tip: “make sure you carve out time to think”. Hertz, who advises business leaders and politicians, spoke to numerous clients and individuals for whom difficult decisions form part of every day life – A&E doctors, fighter pilots and hedge fund managers. 

 

Hertz says we spend very little time thinking about decisions, yet doing so is vital – each of the high-flying but high-pressured individuals she met made time to do so in their working life. “If we’re going to make strategic decisions and innovate, we need thinking time. The challenge is to not just be in response mode. If you want to build a business, you have to be looking ahead, not just putting out fires and managing the day to day.” She recommends blocking out 30 minutes for thinking over the harder decisions you’ve got on the table.

 

Jennifer Dulski, president of Change.org, suggests using the similar “sit with” technique. Writing for LinkedIn, she advises spending several days – even weeks – imagining you’ve already made a decision and it’s now reality. She also recommends creating a grid for a given decision, based on the criteria that matter to you. Score each possible option as a way of quantifying your choices. Dulski points out, however, that the exercise might show that measurable plus points might not be what matter to you most.

 

Indeed, philosopher and TED Talk alumna Ruth Chang has argued that the hardest decisions are such because they resist being quantified. For example, “Is this the right time to change jobs?” The possible options are set by you, rather than someone or something else, so there may not be an easy way to weigh them up, says Chang. 

 

Often this ultimately means that going with what feels right is the best option if you’re faced with a seemingly impossible decision. And despite this attitude sometimes being criticised as vulnerable to irrational or knee-jerk reactions, legal theorist and economist Richard Posner has an encouraging word on gut instinct: “The expert’s snap judgment is the result of a deliberative process made unconscious through habituation.” In short, if you’re highly experienced in your field, your intuitive response to a question is most likely also the right one.

 

---

Decide faster as a team

Free

 

Asana software allows team and project work to be done without email. Founded by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein, it’s designed to up productivity and streamline shared activity by putting it all in one place. It enables group tasks to be centralised, notes and comments to be organised, and has an inbox which updates content in real time. There’s added functionality for the individual too, with built-in organisers, task sharing facilities and reviewing systems.