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Four Tricks to Help You Make Any Difficult Decision
The Mental Backflip
- List all your assumptions about your subject.
- Reverse each assumption. Consider their opposites.
- Ask yourself how to accomplish each reversal.
The end result is a new viewpoint you might not have considered otherwise.
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Key Ideas
Pretend You're Advising a Friend
Think outside yourself a little and pretend like you're offering advice.
The reasoning here is really simple: your short-term emotions get in the way of decisions, and that clouds your judgment. It's hard to break free of your emotions, but it helps to know they affect your choices.
Limit The Information You Take In
We usually believe that the more information you have, the better decisions we can make. However, at some point, we cross a threshold where we have too much information. That's when we start to fill in gaps and add weight to information that doesn't matter.
This makes decision making way more difficult.
Reverse Your Assumptions
You're so prone to continue making the same kind of choices throughout your life that challenging yourself and doing the exact opposite is often the best way to get around this problem.
The idea here is to confront your default behavior, step outside your comfort zone, and use your imagination to test some completely new ideas.
The Mental Backflip
- List all your assumptions about your subject.
- Reverse each assumption. Consider their opposites.
- Ask yourself how to accomplish each reversal.
The end result is a new viewpoint you might not have considered otherwise.
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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Key Ideas
Not Making Good Decisions
- We are quick to jump to conclusions because we fail to search for information that might disprove our thoughts.
The Four Villains of Decision Making
- Narrow framing: The tendency to define our choices in binary terms. We ask, "should I, or shouldn't I?" instead of “What are the ways I could...?”
- Confirmation bias: People tend to select the information that supports their preexisting attitudes, beliefs, and actions.
- Short-term emotion: When we’ve got a difficult decision to make, our feelings occupy our minds. And this doesn't add any new information that could benefit us.
- Overconfidence: People often think they know more than they actually do about how the future will unfold.
Defeating Decision-Making Villains
- Counter narrow framing by widening your options. Expand your set of choices.
- Confirmation bias leads you to gather self-serving information. Analyze and test your assumptions to overcome the bias.
- Short-term emotion will tempt you to make the wrong choice. So distance yourself before deciding.
- Prepare to be wrong. Don't be overconfident about how the future will unfold.
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Key Ideas
Overthinking
It means overanalyzing something that happened, regretting an action, or worrying about the future of something.
It's when you can't think about anything else, and it'...
Overthinking and action
If you're overthinking an idea you can actually do something about, the best thing you can do is take action now.
This doesn't mean you have to suddenly run off to make something, it just means you start taking a step forward. We tend to overthink because we fear failure, but if we just start working, that dissipates quickly
Break the circle of overthinking:
- Relabel the ideas you're overthinking ("self-doubt," "anxiety," etc)
- Reframe your experience and identify your thinking errors
- Refocus your attention on the part that matters
- Revalue your brain's messages with the new information
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3 decision-making mistakes that you must avoid
- Impulsivity. Thorough decisions combine all three senses – seeing, hearing and feeling. Impulsive decisions always lack one of these elements.
- Allowing yourself to be pe...