What is involved in making good decisions? There is a certain amount of analysis involved but there is also the skill of listening to inner wisdom and intuition in making the right decision.
In a fascinating book, The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz argues that satisficers (Satisficers are those who make a decision or take action once their criteria are met) tend to be happier than maximizers (Maximizers want to make the optimal decision). Maximizers must spend a lot more time and energy to reach a decision, and they’re often anxious about whether they are, in fact, making the best choice.
Psychologist Daniel Gilbert, author of the bestseller Stumbling on Happiness, studies the cognitive biases that we use to make decisions. According to Gilbert, we do not make very rational decisions in most cases, nor are we particularly good at predicting what will make us happy. (See his great TED talk for more on this.)
Here are tips on how to make the most of decision making:
1) Weigh up the pros and cons
Do a risk analysis of either option and figure out which option is most likely to produce the results you’d like.