Decide Means “To Cut Away”

To decide is to slay alternatives leaving only one alternative before you.

Decide literally means “to cut away”.

Therefore, we can say that all decisions are functions of binary thinking – This and that.

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THIS one and not THAT one.

Some decisions are more complicated than others, requiring more effort and work on one’s part to sufficiently assign values to the components of the decision, but in the end every decision comes down to slicing away all but one possibility.

As we’ve mentioned before, the culture we live is multiplying the number of decisions we need to make, seemingly on a daily basis. We cannot permit ourselves to become bogged down in dealing with endless unimportant demands on our time, that are not in line with our goals.

Here is where a simple decision heuristic can save you an enormous amount of trouble.

The idea is this: For anything that is not mission critical result, create a system that relieves you of having to rethink or re-handle or re-decide things over and over again.

By creating a system for handling decisions or decision chains like correspondence, bills, food shopping, cleaning – just about any activity that you perform repetitively – you save energy and time and avoid diluting your precious focus, so that you have it available for more important matters.

“Yeah, but I don’t wanna be tied down to some system. I like to play it by ear…”

Really? You know, I NEVER hear that from people who are achieving what they want – ever.

People who are intentionally developing a better prosperity system are on the look-out to streamline their activities, as a matter of course.

Systems NEVER tie you down – they free you. They free your time, energy, and mind.

They relieve you of having to think about stuff that doesn’t merit thinking about.

They stop you from wasting energy refiguring out exactly where and when things will happen.

Most importantly they create a better kind of autopilot.

You change useless stuff for good – for random; you get specific; for interruptions; you get expected; for “I forgot”; you get “No sweat”.

The only time people say that they want to create a more successful system while objecting to systems is when there’s some kind of cover story going on.

Maybe someone made you put your toys while you still wanted to play, or maybe you liked feeling like a stoner “free as a bird” while in college and carried it on a little too long.

Perhaps previous employment was too regimented and now you’re bored by all that “chicken stuff”.

Maybe you think “everything’s fine”, in which case you need to go back to square one – everything is not “fine” – everything may be tolerable or sufficient but what you are doing now IS your self-training, and it is setting your baseline habits for the future.

You need to clear the decks more often, shovel out the stables, and get real about eliminating hurdles from your path – especially decision hurdles.

TREAT EACH IMPORTANT DECISION AS AN OUTPUT OR GOAL END-STATE.

Consider how the results of the decision will impact other areas of your life.

If you have more than two options; set up a goal statement for each option that affects your bigger goals and life.

You are looking to DIFFERENTIATE THE RESULTS EACH OPTION WOULD CREATE.

If you cannot differentiate options examine the possibility that they are not important or that you don’t care. That’s either a good sign or a bad one.

If a decision is important enough to consider; it’s worth weighting the options with significance to support making an easier decision.

Use future scenarios to determine how important it is to choose one option over another. If options have significant consequences in the future, think deeper into it.

WEIGHT each option as fully as you can and hopefully sooner rather than later you will find the “best” option to choose because it hits more important criteria than any other option.

The problem with decisions is not that “they” are hard or easy, big or small… it’s that we wait for something to happen, rather than weight the options with values.

It’s you and what you are not doing rather than “the decision” thing “out there” doing something to you.

Speed comes with practice. Learning to define criteria faster is a good habit to get into. Foundational, one might say.

Take a decision you’ve been waiting on, and put some weights into it…