Top 7 Ways to Make Decisions More Effectively
Whether you’re working for a digital agency or a company deeply involved in the online world, many small (and sometimes a few big) decisions need to be made each day.
Decision fatigue is a huge problem that is only now being recognized. However, making the right or best decision at the time is, in many ways, a learned skill.
Whether you are an employee or thinking of building an online business as a side or main project, learning how to be a better decision-maker is essential.
So, let us now look at the different approaches you can take to improve.
Science of decision fatigue
As somewhat of a foundation, it is best that we first discuss decision fatigue. This is a relatively newly recognized phenomenon that people are now dealing with.
How do we start our day?
Let us think about our day. We wake up, use the bathroom, get dressed, and then (hopefully) eat a nutritious breakfast. This process prepares us mentally for the day ahead while still awake.
Later, our bodies will rely on this initial fuel (and some caffeine assistance) to kick-start our brains.
Small decisions come thick and fast
You may not realize it, but we make small daily decisions.
This includes which route we take to work if we are driving, our choice of listening material in the car, and so on.
It only increases when we go to work (and don’t think you’re running because you work from home too).
Increases intensity at work
The frequency of decisions at work increases. Usually, decisions become more critical as well.
Make the wrong decision, and the consequences can be dire. While we usually run more on auto-pilot with our morning routines, this is not the case at work.
When we have made some decisions, we get mentally exhausted, and it becomes difficult to reach the correct conclusions, so very quickly, we start hitting the wall of decision fatigue.
Master the art of delegation
While you can’t delegate major tasks to those who report to you, it is possible to train certain staff members to perform some of the smaller tasks and get them done well.
To reduce the number of balls you’re juggling and avoid decision fatigue, learn not to hold on to every task for dear life.
You can also “own” the task by assigning it to a responsible team member and overseeing its successful completion.
This helps them grow in knowledge and skills while freeing up their time and mental capacity for more critical projects.
Avoid multi-tasking to make better decisions
While it may seem efficient, being a multi-tasker could be better. Accordingly, there is no such thing as a “great multi-tasker”; therefore, don’t strive for this moniker.
Take a variety of tasks and add them to a list, but then only work on them one at a time.
This doesn’t mean you should only work on one task a day—which usually isn’t very practical—but avoid getting sidetracked or distracted by the next shiny object.
Juggling various projects and decisions related to all of them is mentally exhausting!
Use good decision-making skills by focusing on a single important task to lead to a milestone (if it is impossible to complete it in one session).
When you need to show progress on multiple tasks to a senior manager, work on them individually to make significant progress on each.
Consciously limit your tasks to limit the number of decisions related to them. Then you are in a better position to make crucial decisions at any point during the workday.
Learn to Avoid Decision-itis
We’ll describe “decision-itis” as a form of decision-making procrastination. Many managers get stuck like a deer in headlights waiting for more information to come to a decision.
They fall into the trap of rarely waiting for additional facts before moving forward, leading to company progress that stalls when too many managers behave in the same way.
- Not making quick decisions can be a form of procrastination. It is essential to recognize this danger and work to avoid it.
- Make a list of what information you need to plan, and then determine from whom you will get this data.
- What you need to move forward and stop decision inertia.
- To make better decisions, check out this article from Aston University with some excellent recommendations worth reviewing.
- Be aware of potential biases that lead to poor decisions
- If you have made a wrong decision in the past and it later confuses you about why you did it, it may be due to an implicit bias.
- Bias is how your thinking is pushed in one direction or another by unexpected influences.
For example, with investing in the stock market, many investors suffer from ‘ repetition bias ‘, where they weigh their recent investment experience against what happened in the past. This leads to decisions that work well in the present but ignore the stock market’s history, such as the significant market upheavals that occur every 5-10 years.
In business, look for confirmation bias or follow the same pattern because it feels comfortable. Confirmation bias is accepting research or facts you already believe and settling on them rather than looking deeper.
A comfort bias decides on a particular course of action, product or service development because it is close to what has been done before and feels safe.
Moving on to see other biases is included as you are highly encouraged to act. A bias towards an action orientation can lead some to pursue things or even to say “yes” to acquire a company for the same reason, then later discover that there were bad decisions.
Conclusion
Mastering decision-making is more important than you realize. Fortunately, this is something you can learn to get better at with time and effort on your part. When you can acquire skills, it is easier to succeed as a business owner or manager.
