Delaying a decision, zeroing in on the wrong decision and regretting making a decision … which decision-making blunders are holding you back?
The overwhelming pressure to make the right decision does little to sway one’s judgement or improve their abilities at decision-making. One ends up committing to an erroneous decision often hastily arrived at by considering biased information / choices which impact both professional and personal life. The potential to make decisions by calculating the potential risks and assessing the practicalities could be a daunting task.
But there must be some way around it?
Actively Reduce Confirmation Bias
When one already harbours an opinion about something and they deliberately attempt to interpret evidence or information in a way that syncs with this opinion, it is a conformational bias which might impinge on sound decision-making skills. Since it is all about engaging with information based on pre-existing ideas and analysis, it affects the capacity to navigate through problems by implementing the right decisions.
Quickly Escalating to Conclusion
This obsession with making a hasty decision is a major character flaw and gives little scope for careful analysis of facts or understanding the consequent risks that such foolhardiness might result in. People who struggle with decision-making should be especially aware of not rushing to conclusions in high-anxiety scenarios such as business meetings, time-sensitive projects, family conflicts or scenarios which require impromptu responses. A degree of awareness would eliminate the propensity of hurried and erroneous decision-making.
Blindly Following the Herd
Getting carried away by the flow could be chill but a real hazard when somebody is trying to be rational. The issue with imitation or accepting what others are could be detrimental to discovering smarter and unique alternatives or action plans. Besides jeopardising decision-making skills, it becomes a death blow to one’s creativity and propensity to think outside the box.
Stop Using Attribution Bias
With attribution bias, people give in to faulty reasoning and make unfair judgements of people’s character owing to certain actions they have committed. To steer clear from grave blunders of decisions, one should allow benefit of doubt till more information is available. It is always prudent to proceed towards a choice based on concrete details and evidence instead of biased interpretation and subjective reality since these qualities generally result in disasters.
Also, by a conscious avoidance of certain habits—wishful thinking, over-generalisation, restricting communication, practising circular thinking and verging on excessive comparisons, regretful decisions could be averted.
