Be thoughtful about how you use pros and cons lists

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 pursu...

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 crysta...

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...

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.

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...

Much of this decision-making is difficult. Weighing options is especially hard due to certain biases that can lead you astray.

These biases can include over-or underestimating the likelihood of something happening to you based on whether your friends have experienced so...