When faced with a difficult decision, it can be tempting to take the easy road and procrastinate. This attitude illustrates what might be the greatest myth about decision-making: that, faced with two choices, we still have the option to not decide and to do nothing.

By methodically assessing your options against a comprehensive set of objectives, it is possible that one option will emerge as the obvious decision to take. In many instances, though, more work will be needed.

Making decisions under pressure can blur people’s judgment in at least three ways:

Any systematic weighting exercise requires you to assign scores and probabilities in a way that isn’t entirely scientific and that relies on an element of ‘gut feeling’.

In the 16th century, the Spanish priest and theologian Ignatius of Loyola suggested three ways you can achieve more psychological distance from a difficult decision:

Ultimately, what defines a hard decision isn’t so much the decision itself, but how it is perceived by the decision-maker. You might feel that a decision is hard because:

Having selected your best option, you need to act upon it. This is what trips up many people. They find it hard – sometimes even impossible – to get started. One way out of such a dilemma is to break down your big decision into a series of micro-decisions.

When facing difficult decisions, it is likely that different parts of you might want different things.

The etymology of the word ‘decision’ provides important insight. It comes from the Latin word caedere meaning ‘to cut off’.

How can you think outside the box and see that other elusive option?

Establish whether your team is working towards the same objectives and ask the following key questions:

A practical approach is to write about each option (half a page each time on a separate sheet), and explore how you feel while writing; also, how you feel about each sheet in front of you. If you throw them into the wastepaper bin one by one until one remains, what are the emotions and feelin...

• In the short term, people experience more regret from ‘errors of commission’ (taking an action that leads to a disappointing outcome).
• In the long term it is actually ‘errors of omission’ that lead to more regret –...

Objectives are the ultimate goals that a decision aims to achieve.

The more you struggle with difficult decisions, the less distance from them you enjoy and the more bogged down you can become.

• First, what are the objectives behind your decision?
• Next, what weight (from 0-100 per cent) would you assign to each objective: ie, how important is this objective to you?
• Now, turning to each option available to you, what mark (between 1 and 10) would you give it to fulfil ...

Even the world’s most famous investor, Warren Buffett, credits some of his best decision-making to a method known as the 10/10/10, meaning: how will I feel about today’s decision in 10 days’ time, vs 10 months, vs 10 years?