Deciding UP The Decision Delta

Today we’re going over a simple reframe that will help you make more effective decisions.

Let’s start with the issue: every day we have more decisions to make than we can make, with any sort of quality.

Boiled down, too many decisions.

The solution?

More effective decisions. 

Which means, more decisions that are meaningful to us and less that aren’t.

An effective decision requires you to know what you value, what matters to you...most...and second most, and so on.

A hierarchy of importance, if you will. 

If you don’t have this, you will be re-making decisions, constantly “deciding” and re-deciding what to focus on, what to buy at the store, what to eat, drink, wear... when to do your emails, or call your mom or friends, and so the story goes. 

This is wasteful.

So, what can we do?

Answer: Decide UP the ‘Decision Delta’.

An effective decision doesn’t need to be made again.

An ineffective decision requires remaking again and again and again.

Here are some examples of reducing negative behaviors.

Effective decision: a hard ‘NO’ to that first YouTube video, instead of

In-effective decision: a soft ‘no’ to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th... 

Or,

Effective Decision: a firm ‘NO’ to those cookies at the store, instead of...

In-effective decision: a partial ‘no’ again and again and again at your house, which undoubtedly leads to you eating them anyways. Ineffective on two accounts. 1) Mentally wasteful, 2) succumbed to temptation.

Now let’s look at increasing some positive behaviors (which depend on your value hierarchy, are these meaningful to you).

Effective decision: you have a set time you talk with your friend Barry: every Tuesday at 3pm your time.

In-effective decision: you and Barry don’t have a set time or rhythm and it goes a little something like this: every week, or every few weeks (which in this case is an ineffective decision as it’s not happening with the frequency you want) you go: ~should we talk on Monday at 6? 6PM. My time, not your time. How about Wednesday at 9PM your time? I have this thing coming up this week so what about Sunday in the morning. *Weeks go by, you try again*

We’ve all been here.

And it’s exhausting.

So, let’s reduce the amount of bad decisions we make and increase the amount of good ones.

Let’s decide UP the decision delta.

I’ll leave you with this soundbite: the most effective decision is the one you only have to make once.

A partner on the path, 

Chris @ HACKTHATHABIT

——— 

 P.S. Deciding up the ‘Decision Delta’ is very similar to Gary Keller’s and Tim Ferriss’ clarifying questions (both brilliant minds): 

Gary Keller: "What is The ONE Thing I can do such that everything else becomes easier or unnecessary?"

Tim Ferriss: "Which one of these, if done, would render all the rest either easier or completely irrelevant?"

The visual representation of a delta helped me, so I thought I’d share. Hope it helped!