You can listen to a short version of the article. If it's more convenient for you, turn on the podcast.
Important decisions are not easy for anyone. But it also happens that you need to make a simple choice at first glance, and you doubt your every step. This situation has a name What is decision fatigue? / Medical News Today — "decision fatigue". In its most neglected cases, people fall into a stupor, even when they have to choose what to eat for lunch.
However, there are several life hacks that make the difficult selection process a little easier and help to weed out some of the doubts.
If you face the need to make an important decision, but there is no clear deadline by which it needs to be done, set it yourself.
On the one hand, more time is good, because you can thoroughly prepare, weigh all the options and come to the optimal one. On the other hand, the absence of an exact deadline makes you endlessly doubt, chew the same information, worry — and postpone the decision.
Besides, we're just doing a better job M. Katzir, A. Emanuel, N. Liberman. Cognitive performance is enhanced if one knows when the task will end / Cognition with the task, if we know exactly when to finish.
At the same time, it is important that the deadlines are realistic. It is not necessary to postpone the decision for a couple of years, but forcing yourself to make a choice in two hours is also not the best idea.
Information is important, but the more data, the more confusion and doubt. In addition, the study itself requires time and effort. Therefore, at some point you need to tell yourself "stop" and limit yourself to the knowledge that you already have.
Let's say you want to buy a country house. If you thoroughly study every district, village and cottage settlement and learn absolutely everything from transport accessibility and the state of the environment to building plans for the next ten years, you will go crazy. So it's worth highlighting a few key parameters that are most important to you and collecting data only about them.
You may have heard about the experiment 1. S. S. Iyengar, M. R. Lepper. When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing? / Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
2. B. Schwartz. More isn’t always better / Harvard Business Review with a selection of jam. Shoppers at the supermarket were offered to taste and buy jam, but one of them had to choose from 24 flavor options, while others had to choose from only six.
It seems that the richer the choice, the better, but in fact it turned out that abundance is discouraging. The participants of the experiment, who were shown 24 jars, eventually "hung up", and only 3% of them made a purchase. And among those who had six flavors to choose from, 30% bought jam.
The results of this experiment should be taken into account: if there are too many options in front of you, try to artificially cut off some of them. In the example of buying a house, you can decide in advance that you are considering only certain areas, specific materials from which the house is built, a strictly defined plot area, and so on.
And if you choose what to order for lunch, agree with yourself that this week you eat only Asian cuisine or, say, only lean dishes.
Here you have woken up in a perfect tomorrow. What house do you live in? What kind of job do you go to? What color is your hair? And the walls in the living room?
If you dream a little, you can get to the bottom of Planning ahead is good, but planning backward is better / Quartz to what you really want, and make the best choice.
Such "looking ahead" and acting from the opposite is one of the methods of short—term therapy Solution-Focused Brief Therapy / Psychology Today , focused on finding solutions. This psychological approach helps to make a choice quickly and painlessly.
If there is someone in your environment who is reliable, honest and friendly, someone who is able to give you a reasoned opinion without bluntness, ask him about it. It can be a friend, partner, parent.
Try to apply for such a "hall help" if you are completely confused. But remember that you are responsible for the decision in any case.
The researchers came S. Danziger, J. Levav, L. Avnaim-Pesso. Extraneous factors in judicial decisions / PNAS to the conclusion that at the beginning of the day and after a break for rest, judges make more balanced and adequate decisions than in the evening, when they get tired and confused.
In principle, this pattern is logical and does not particularly need scientific verification. In the morning we have more strength, we are not yet exhausted by the many choices that had to be made during the day. So if you have to solve something important, do it as soon as you wake up.
