How do you base sound decisions?

No matter what you do in life, day-in and day-out people everywhere face the reality of making decisions. From the normal decisions of what clothes to wear and what to eat, to bigger and more in-depth decisions involving long-term plans and options concerning work, home and family. That being the case, it just makes sense that a number of those decisions will be somewhat more difficult to make.

Many of those challenging decisions can often be complicated by motivations, individual moods, and other circumstances surrounding the situation itself. Some people prefer to jump right in and make more rash decisions, and others may fall into what’s known as analysis paralysis. The latter producing obvious results in procrastinating on a number of decisions.

You might feel a little under pressure, overly stressed and you simply put-off making a decision. Basically, the analysis paralysis becomes complicated. So, what’s the best approach for you to make sound decisions? It obviously involves sound reasoning.

Sound decisions and sound reasoning

So, what is sound reasoning? It’s a process. When you reason your way into a decision you consider all of the available information, the alternatives, as well as how your decision may align with your values.
When you make an important decision, you may have always done so simply because it feels like it’s the right one. That doesn’t always measure up, though. When it comes to sound reasoning you need more. You need to have an explanation, or the rationale, that supports your thought process. For example, you are presented with a solution to a problem.

You don’t feel it’s the right one, so you choose an alternative. Why did you go with the alternative? It shouldn’t be because it felt right, it should be for a reason. Those reasons may be less risk, better result or that it better aligns with the values of you or your company.

The point is that you have the ability to back up your choice. You can point to the information that you used to make the decision and you used a proven method to make your decision.

On the other side of the coin, poor decisions are borne from bad reasoning. People will often assume the best-case scenario and completely ignore what could happen. For example, some people choose basic car insurance because there’s no way their car will be broken into, stolen or set on fire.

What approach to take?

Now, ask yourself. How do you approach the decision-making process?

Do you take all options into consideration before you make your ruling?

Do you analyze the information in comparison to your values?

If you had to explain your decision, how would you defend it?

Are there ethical reasons for avoiding a certain decision in lieu of another?

Let’s take a look with the process a bit.

You can ask questions of both your heart and your head, so consider these.

There are really four components to the decision-making process.

• Gut instinct – this is the lens you filter your views through.
• Raw data – this is all of the information available to you, it needs to be refined.
• Information – this is the evolved data set.
• Knowledge – ultimately, this is the information after you have analyzed it appropriately.

More to the point, ask your heart whether the answer feels right. If it doesn’t, why doesn’t it? Will the people that you respect, and trust agree with the rationale that you used to come to this decision? For your head, ask what decision is the best one and what would be necessary to choose an alternative? Have you considered the probabilities surrounding any uncertainty?

If you are faced with a variety of options, you can list the pros and cons for each. You can also create a spreadsheet or simulation, influence diagrams, and even decision trees.

What you don’t want to let happen is ignoring or leaving out any possibilities by suggesting that it won’t happen to you. You shouldn’t misinterpret any factual details and information that might twist it to your advantage or benefit.

And last, don’t ignore the available details and information which doesn’t jive with your thought process. Don’t make decisions that are based on wishful thinking.