Fast-forward four years and picture yourself on job interviews. One way to make a good impression on potential employers is to show off your effective decision-making abilities. Leaders need to be thoughtful but quick when it comes to choosing between A or B. Think you could use some improvement in that department?
Now is the perfect time to get better at making decisions, because let's face it, you've got a lot to deal with these days: how you'll spend the upcoming summer, what your final papers will be about and oh...which college to enroll in! To help, we asked for quick tips from all sorts of people who make decisions daily. Take a look:
“I always encourage people to do their best to make reality-based decisions. So, the task is to try and eliminate confirmation bias and figure out whether what you think you know about something is really true or not. This is why site visits to a college are so important. Something might look good in a brochure, but until you get there, your judgment may be clouded by wishful thinking.” – Jennifer Hancock, author of The Humanist Approach to Happiness and founder of Humanist Learning Systems
“There are certainly many processes one can go through to make a decision and most are rational, pro/con, risk/reward thought processes. Sometimes, however, you get stuck. When I get stuck, I flip a coin—but the coin flip itself is not the final decision. Here's how it works: Chose heads for one option, tails for the other. Flip the coin. Then measure your immediate gut response: "Oh yeah" or "Oh no". That will determine the decision. If you feel disappointed with the result, choose the other option. If you are happy with it, it is the right choice. This is a very intuitive process so some personality types will be better at it than others.” – Louis Altman, Founder and CEO of GlobaFone
“Sleep on it. Rushing into a decision is a recipe for disaster. Time has a way of helping us sort things out in our minds. There is definitely something to letting a decision simmer for a while. Two of the greatest benefits to sleeping on decisions is that the initial euphoria that causes us to make impulse decisions wears off, and you can come back later with a fresh mind to re-evaluate all the information.” – R. Joseph Ritter, Jr. CFP, Zacchaeus Financial Counseling, Inc.
“Visualize six months, one year, and five years into the future of what your life would be like because you made a decision. Are you happy with the outcomes or not? Visualizing helps you to experience something before you do it.” – Ronald Kaufman, author of Anatomy of Success
“Talk to mentors. Don't be afraid to talk to teachers, other parents, or family friends who are doing what you want to do. For example, if you want to be a lawyer, find a lawyer to talk to and see which path they took. This will help you be confident in what decisions you make.” – Alexander Myles, College Speaker and Trainer
Now, back to that college decision you're working on...
