How To Become a Better Decision-Maker

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.

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.

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.