What's for breakfast, jeans or trousers, a new blouse or a cozy wool sweater? Hair open or closed, how about riding your bike to the office again and what is the smartest way to set up the presentation for your colleagues? According to Munich brain researcher Ernst Pöppel, we meet an average of 20,000 people a day. We encounter most of these unconsciously. Routines give us orientation, make us more efficient and automate our judgments.
If you spend an hour every day thinking about what you should have for every meal, you will most likely need a lot of time for all other everyday decisions, you may get bogged down and you will hardly have any time for other activities. Most of us therefore make everyday decisions fairly quickly. What helps is experience. For example, if I know that oatmeal is good for me in the morning, it is relatively easy for me to choose my breakfast. Bigger decisions with far-reaching consequences are more difficult. Many people paralyze themselves by overthinking, going in circles, and ultimately being unable to make a decision because they are afraid of picking the wrong option. This will help you decide more quickly in the new year...
How decisions come about in the first place
If you want to change your willingness to make decisions, it would be good to first look at how decisions come about: every decision is accompanied by a process in which you weigh things up both rationally and personally. A choice occurs when one of the existing options is judged to be correct both internally and externally. So for example: You want something sustainably producedbuy that suits your personal taste. Only if quality and appearance go hand in hand will you choose this or that part.
Choosing becomes particularly difficult when it comes to decisions that have far-reaching consequences: Will this property still meet our living standards in ten years? Is this partner really suitable for a whole?? Will this job make me happy in the long term? And so forth.
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All decisions that people make every day involve residual risk and a certain degree of uncertainty.
Prof. Gerd Gigerenzer, co-founder of “Simply Rational – The Institute for Decisions”
Which helps make decisions
Anyone who has good access to hishas, is easier to decide. The crux of the matter is that even if you collect all the information you can find to make this or that decision, it still doesn't make the choice for you. Instead of clear direction, you may find confusion and feel overwhelmed trying to filter through the flood of information. What can then help is intuition. So a body feeling that leads you to one decision or another. You only feel this when you are connected to yourself. But: the more often we make decisions using our feelings, the more we trust them - and the easier decisions will be for us in the future.
Sounds pretty theoretical? These five concrete tips will help you decide:
5 tips to be able to make decisions faster in the future
1. Connect with yourself
In order to get better and more reliable access to your own feelings, according to psychologist and author Stefanie Stahl, it can help to take around ten minutes a day to listen to yourself. You can then ask yourself: How am I really feeling today? What do I need and what don't I need? Should I restructure my day based on how I feel and delete to-dos?
2. Obtain information
Some decisions can only be made meaningfully if you have certain information. Otherwise, you rely solely on your intuition. A way that can work, but for many it involves too muchcan be connected. Getting information from reliable sources can help you get a feel for a decision and be able to assess which choice best suits your personal life situation.
3. Be open to all alternatives
If you have made up your mind from the start, it can be difficult to consider other options. It helps to keep an open mind and seriously consider all possible decisions. Maybe you'll be surprised and end up deciding on something that you didn't even think about at the beginning.
4. Set a time limit for your decision
Especially for people who meticulously weigh up all the pros and cons and gather all the information available on the topic, it helps to set a time limit by which you can make a decision. And then realize that you have made the right decision for yourself. That there was enough information available for this.
5. The knowledge: There is no such thing as a “perfect” decision
Every decision for something is at the same time a decision against something. The absolutely perfect and absolutely right decision is a utopia. Ultimately, you can only decide on something in the now. Would you make this decision again years later? Probably not, but that's not the point. Most decisions don't have to last forever. If one day they are no longer compatible with the life you want to lead, you can undo them. And when you can no longer undo them, radical acceptance helps. So accept what is without resistance and without questioning it. By the way, it's also something that you can practice again and again, especially on a small scale, and doesn't have to be mastered straight away.
