10 Ways to Improve the Quality of Your Decisions

Having a clear WHY and priorities improves the quality of your decisions. When a certain course of action is not in line with your priorities and not congruent with your values, it is clear what the decision is.

If you let others make decisions for you, your decision-making muscles will atrophy. The more you make decisions, the better you get at it. The best decision you can make is to take ownership of your life. It sparks a chain reaction of changes that force you to make decisions.

Study people who made bold/good decisions, and study the context of the decisions. Some things are hard to know; many great decision-makers make decisions based on their "gut." Dont stop there. Study these people. Their gut is their accumulated experiences, interactions, etc.

I love reading about Steve Jobs because he made so many bad decisions until he started making great ones.

Shadow big decision makers, put yourself in their shoes. Think about what you would do if you were the president, the dean of the faculty, etc.

Track your decisions. Say you canceled a trip? Go back and check the reasons. Was it because it is not aligned with your priorities, ego, etc.?

If you do not do anything, you do not need to make many decisions. Having a bias for actions put you on the path of practicing your decision-making.

That is what I will be doing in the next two weeks. Vacation time.