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3 Ways To Make Decisions You Can Stand By Forever
Empowering people
One of the root causes of analysis paralysis is that CEOs and founders built their organization to depend upon them. As a leader, your responsibility is not to make every decision yourself, but to create systems and a culture that empowers people to make educated decisions on their own.
Ask yourself how you can instil the same level of self-trust in those around you.
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Key Ideas
Put a Deadline on Your Thoughts
To avoid over-ruminating about a decision, give yourself a time frame to think about it.
If it’s a small issue such as what paint color to paint your office, perhaps...
Schedule Your Thinking Time
To avoid thinking about problems all day long, schedule a specific time where you give yourself the freedom to think about the issue you need to make a decision about.
If thoughts about the issue creep into your brain before your scheduled thinking time, tell yourself “No, I’m going to think about that after dinner, not during this meeting”.
Problem Solving vs. Worrying
Dwelling on a problem, thinking “this is horrible, I can’t handle this” or rehashing things that happened in the past are an unproductive use of your time.
Thinking about what steps you can take to improve the situation or actively thinking of a solution to the problem are helpful toward moving forward.
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Key Ideas
Paradox of Choice
Overthinking lowers your performance
Our working memory is what allows us to focus on the information we need to get things done at the moment we’re doing them. It is also in limited supply. You can think of it like our brain’s computer memory. Once it’s used up, nothing more can fit in.
When you overanalyze a situation, the repetitive thoughts, anxiety, and self-doubt decrease the amount of working memory you have available to complete challenging tasks, causing your productivity to plummet.
Overthinking kills your creativity
A recent Stanford study suggests that over-thinking not only impedes our ability to perform cognitive tasks but keeps us from reaching our creative potential as well.
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Key Ideas
For decision-making success:
- Book time to think: It’s counterintuitive, but making decisions faster requires consciously giving yourself time to make them.
- Define the decision: Before delving into de...
Fall back on your values
Having clear values that you try to live by can make tough decisions easier.
For example, maybe you know there’s a certain amount of time you want to spend with your family, or a baseline level of debt you’re willing to carry.
Talk it through
You don’t need to speak with someone who’s knowledgeable on the topic.
You just need a good listener who’ll give you time and space to hear out your monologue and occasionally reflect back to you what you’ve shared.