How to get better at making every type of decision

While it’s worth taking time to settle larger decisions, don’t expend too much time and energy on the small stuff.

And don’t stress about the quality of your decision-making on these small choices either. Although the term decision fatigue — i.e., the more decisions you make during the day, the more likely you are to make bad ones — is buzzworthy, research doesn’t support its supposed effects. Having to make 10 choices a day versus two choices doesn’t mean your 10th choice will be worse. There’s no evidence of that.

In some instances, making a decision before you’re actually in a specific scenario can help you avoid being swayed by outside forces, or ending up overwhelmed by the number of choices available. Going to the grocery store armed with a list can help you get everything you need.

There are all sorts of situations when, in the heat of the moment, you might make a decision you later regret. Pre-committing to a plan can prevent you from giving into those urges that could be bad.

Don’t make a major decision in a vacuum. Get a handful of opinions — ideally from people with prior experience in the topic at hand.

The more expertise they have, the less likely they are to base their evaluations on a bias.

Emotions get a bad rap for negatively influencing decision-making. However, it’s impossible to divorce emotions from logic. The key is to understand how emotions are impacting your choices.

Understanding that, for example, anger makes us take more risks can help crystallize why you may want to aggressively tailgate the car that just cut you off on the highway.

Realizing your emotions are pulling you in a certain direction can make you better equipped to accept these feelings for what they are.

What you really want is not that simple. It’s based on very complex and very subtle beliefs, memories.

These lists can still be useful tools. When you force yourself to spell out the good and the bad in each choice, you have to slow down and think about your priorities and values. Your actions should be authentic representations of your needs — and the pros and cons list can be a helpful way of zeroing in on what you really want.

Don’t think of decisions just as protective measures meant to prevent you from making your life worse. You can make choices that make a good situation even better.

“What decision can I make to make my life more interesting in the future?” If you think of some alternatives and you pursue one, your life didn’t get worse because you decided to think of that.