Assessing frankly the consequences of each alternative will help you to identify those that best meet your objectives—all your objectives.

Understand the consequences

The way you frame your decision at the outset can make all the difference. State your decision problems carefully, acknowledge their complexity and avoid unwarranted assumptions and option-limiting prejudices.

Work on the right decision

Your decision can be no better than your best alternative.

Create imaginative alternatives

What could happen in the future and how likely is it that it will?

Clarify your uncertainties

A decision is a means to an end. Ask yourself what you most want to accomplish and which of your interests, values, concerns, fears, and aspirations are most relevant to achieving your goal.Decisions with multiple objectives cannot be resolved by focusing on any one objective.

Specify your objectives

When decisions involve uncertainties, the desired consequence may not be the one that actually results. A much-deliberated bone marrow transplant may or may not halt cancer.

Your risk tolerance

What you decide today could influence your choices tomorrow, and your goals for tomorrow should influence your choices today. Thus many important decisions are linked over time.

Consider linked decisions

Because objectives frequently conflict with one another, you’ll need to strike a balance. Some of this must sometimes be sacrifices in favor of some of that.

Grapple with your tradeoffs

Making decisions is a fundamental life skill. Expecting to make perfect decisions all of the time is unreasonable. When even an ounce of luck is involved, good decisions can have bad outcomes. So our goal should be to raise the odds of making a good decision.

Create imaginative alternatives

Making Smart Choices: 8 Keys to Making Effective Decisions

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