It just occurred to me that sometimes, the way that a person conducts himself or herself in his or her business can be quite different from the way that same person conducts himself or herself in his or her personal life. I’m going to be talking about decision making today, and I realized that I have no trouble at all making decisions, even very major decisions, about my home – based businesses. I gather information, weigh my options (briefly and logically), and commit to a course of action. Believe it or not, the decisions that I have trouble making are the rather mundane and totally inconsequential details of my personal life. Such monumental decisions as what to have for lunch or which type of bread to buy at the store get me all befuddled.
Whether you struggle with big decisions or small ones, work decisions or personal ones, here are a couple of tips for getting un – stuck and deciding. One way to make decision making easier is to have a list of your goals handy at all times. Try writing them down and keeping it with your calendar or in some other place where you can find it fast. When a decision has to be made, look at that list and see whether any of your options will take you in the direction of any of your goals. If so, that may be the best way to go. Another tip – which I must remember to implement ASAP – is to ask yourself what that decision will mean for you in five years. If I’m agonizing over which loaf of bread to choose, all I have to do is see whether there is something nutritious which is on sale. Five years down the road, I want to have remained firm in my commitments to provide nutritious foods for my family while sticking to a fairly tight budget. No agonizing required, just find the “sale” bread, check the ingredient list to make sure that there’s no high fructose corn syrup or other nasties in there, and toss it in the cart.
If you think about it, the two tips that I just mentioned are actually two ways of doing the same thing – reminding yourself of what is important to you and deciding based upon that. I’m sure that I can make personal decisions as easily as business decisions if I put my mind to it and keep my personal goals as clear and visible as my business goals. Of course, all of this discussion about people’s decision making habits leaves me curious – am I the only one who operates in this manner, or are there others? Do more people have trouble making big decisions or small ones? Work decisions or personal ones? Please feel free to share your thoughts on this topic because I would love to know.
Photo by ronnieb on morguefile.com.