#13 - 3 hints on decision making

I’ve always been amused by the infinite time it takes me to order at a pizzeria.
I always look at all the pizzas, although 90% of the time I end up with my favorite choice, the famous and most classic “Regina.”
This tendency has the unique capacity to piss off my boyfriends.
To be honest, let me share the whole picture here: They are annoyed not only because I take 20 minutes of our lives to make a decision when we both already know what I’ll decide, but because this familiar and aggravating process actually began even before we sat down. Before we enter the restaurant, I have burned 45 other minutes (give or take) enjoying looking at a bunch of different restaurants in the neighborhood and comparing their menus.

“Gosh… If she acts like this for a pizza, imagine how it would be for everything else.”
Au contraire!
I’ve bought properties, three times. In each of these situations the first time I visited them I made an official offer on the houses before the sun went down.
A couple of hours for a decision that will impact years of my life.
And these are by far the best decisions I ever made.

3 points I want to stress here about decision making:

1- The active decision process
In both cases, whether it’s pizzas or properties, it all ends with a decision, right?
But in the second case only it began with an active decision process.
What is an active decision process ? Here it is:

• First, know what your desire is. You must know clearly enough what you want and what you don't want, and what you need and what you don't need, to be aligned with yourself.
• Then, you set up your criteria that line up with your desire in order to help yourself when you'll have to compare options. Concretize and document precisely each of them. Prioritize the criteria and weigh them against each other.
• Now you are ready to examine the few remaining options that will match all your requirements.

Sometimes, at this stage you’ll be challenged to reconsider the weight or the priorities because you realize that something needs to be adjusted.
It can be a good reality check. That is okay. Rewrite it.

Once the best options emerge, embrace the one in the top of your rank. This is the right one.
Don’t second guess yourself with any classic FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) sabotage. Of course, something better exists somewhere else, but great enough enables you to move on.

How do you handle this active decision process? How can you help yourself dealing better with it?

2- Look for the right one
When making a choice, you look at all the possibilities that are offered to you. Depending on the range of options you can definitely feel drawn, lose your focus, and reconsider ten times the “best one.”
Especially because in the realm of analysis, you can tell as many stories as you use different factors to settle comparisons.
But the real problem here is that you are in a passive way dealing only with what has been presented to you and thus taking the risk of missing what really matters to you.
Whereas, in the decision-making system, you get back in the driver seat because you ask yourself first and foremost what you want. Then you actually choose the “right one” among a smaller selection of options that match your criteria. 

When the volume is too loud from all the possibilities, (re)set the tone by claiming your desire first.

3- The game changer.
As we can see in these ordinary examples, my personal game changer seems to be the stakes.
When the stakes are high (buying a property), my process shifts into decision-making mode and enables me to decide quickly with more conviction.
To the contrary, when the stakes are low (ordering at the restaurant), it looks like I lose myself in insignificant and numerous steps of assessment. No drama here, but no performance either.

In what scenarios are you best at making decisions? What patterns do you notice? Here behind, you might find your game changer.
Whenever you need to raise your performance, find a way to invoke your game changer!