How to Make a Good Decision in 7 (Reasonably Easy) Steps

Source: Camrocker/Getty Images Pro

Decisions, decisions. It’s not always easy to get to certainty on questions with no clear answers.

Should you take the job you know you’ll enjoy, or the one that pays more?

Should you leave your family and friends to move closer to your long-distance boyfriend?

Should you drop a longtime friend who’s become flaky, or cut him some slack?

Here’s a suggested procedure for making tough decisions.

1. Turn the decision into a yes or no question. E.g., Should I take the insurance job? Should I move to Chicago? Should I drop this friend?

2. This part is pretty standard in decision-making: Make two columns on a sheet of paper. One is for pros (the potential benefits of answering yes to your question), the other for cons (potential drawbacks). List all the pros and cons you can think of in their respective columns. Try for at least a dozen of each, and keep going until you exhaust all your ideas.

Since a sound decision should involve both your head and your heart, the following steps are designed to help you corral your thoughts, feelings, and values.

3. Check your pulse. Now that you’ve recorded the pros and cons of saying yes, examine each column separately. Do you feel a pull one way or the other? If so, make a note of which column you're drawn to. (Don’t worry; you’re not making a decision yet. Just noting your reaction.)

4. Cross out all items that aren’t necessarily true. E.g., “I’m too old to go back to school,” “Other people won’t understand,” etc. For now, leave intact any items that say something “might” happen, since that’s probably a fact -- i.e., that something might or could happen.

Before moving on to the next step, think about some of your core values, such as family, health, commitment, honesty, respect, or personal development. Although many people share similar values, we don’t all rank them in the same order.

What’s in your top five?

Once you have a handle on some of your personal values…

5. Circle any items that speak to those. Whether you value flexibility and freedom or structure and routine, your personal values point to what’s right for you. An example of an item you might circle is, “Will allow me to set my own hours.”

6. Underline items that focus on loss. E.g., “It might not work out,” or “It’s very expensive.” When we focus on what we might lose instead of what we hope to gain, we risk stalling our own growth.

7. Count all items that are neither crossed out nor underlined and sum them at the bottom of each column.

Add a point to the total under the column that spoke to you in Step 3 above, and another point to the total under the column that contains the most circled items.

If there’s a clear winner, you’re done.

If you go through the steps above and it’s still not clear whether it’s yes or no, ask yourself the following questions:

• Is it really not clear, or is it just difficult to follow through?
• Who am I afraid will be hurt by this decision?
• Do I have to decide this today?
• Can I flip a coin?
• If I had to decide based on how I feel today, rather than how I think I might feel in the future, would the answer be clear?

The last question is especially helpful. As Daniel Gilbert points out in his book Stumbling on Happiness, most of us are terrible predictors of how our future selves will feel.

Therefore, when making decisions, the most sensible thing to do is try to please our current selves.

Hope that helps. Let me know in the comments if you try these steps, and how well they work for you.