I've had a lot of situations where I had to be the one making decisions that affect not just me but the decision also affects my siblings, my family, my teammates, my colleagues, and co. Having that sort of responsibility on your shoulders is extremely useful to your growth and development.
One of the things you learn from that is that you have to be very aware of the fact that your decisions have a lot of consequences that can go beyond you to affect those around you. Having that in mind makes us want to think well before we make decisions.
For the record, the costs and benefits of making decisions vary. The weight on my shoulder when deciding if I should take breakie each day is different from the weight on my shoulder when I'm making decisions as a team leader in a project that could be life-changing.
With that in mind, I will walk y'all through some questions related to decision-making and how I act in such situations;
What are the steps I take when making decisions?
Decision-making is filled with uncertainty and that's why it's not a surprise that many people who are trying to make a difficult life decision are always weighing out the costs and benefits of making that decision. That's a given because everyone wants to be sure they are making a decision that won't come back to bite them hard.
In my case, even when I'm looking at things to weigh the costs and benefits of making a decision, I also go steps further to weigh the costs and benefits of not making that decision. I do this because there have been moments when the costs of not making a decision turn out to be worse than the cost of making a decision, even when the decision I'm supposed to make is a risky one.
A good example of this was the decision I had to make after spending a year in the marketing unit of a Commercial Bank in Nigeria. This was in the first quarter of 2021. Within that one year I spent, I did a rough estimate of my Finances and the lifestyle I was living as a Banker. The work is a fancy one, but the finesse of being a Banker wasn't enough to cover bills. Now, for someone as ambitious as myself, remaining in that job can make me miserable.
I had to decide on something else and that decision-making was tough because most people assumed that working in a bank is the best sort of work you can do. For me who's already in the system, I didn't find the routine work they do there fulfilling. It's the type of work that will have me do the same thing for decades without having room to aim high enough toward achieving my goal.
I needed to quit that job and dive into something that's fairly more inspiring but also more risky. People called me crazy when they realize what I did, but I made the decision knowing fully well that I was, at the point, screwed regardless of what I chose. I decided to choose what I believed will serve my long-term purpose and I'm glad I made that decision.
Life isn't looking too bad at the moment and I can afford to do other things on the side geared towards improving my life and positioning myself on paths that leads to the life goals I've set for myself.
How long does it take me to make decisions?
For the biggest decisions I've made in recent years, I don't ever remember taking too long to make those decisions. I can get ideas about things and do my research about those things. If it's a decision that involves money, I check if I can afford to spend that much money. For example, when I spent a fortune last year to get a laptop that gives me a decent 10+ hours of battery life, making that decision was a piece of cake.
Not because I have so much money. Nope! It was easy because I had just enough to pay for it and I knew I needed the laptop because I was about to travel two days later and my laptop would be very useful where I was traveling to. When I did the Maths, it was obvious that buying that laptop would make me have to manage my finances for the next couple of days. Well, being minimalistic with my Finances isn't strange to me.
So, I just woke up two days before my travel, made some calls, and went to physically check the laptop. When it was unsealed, I checked to be sure the specs tallied with what it was supposed to be. Voila! I paid for it and the laptop has been serving its purpose since then till this very moment.
If I get a disappointing outcome, how do I deal with it?
How else? Haha. I just have to take the L like a champ. I won't cry about a bad decision I've already made. Before making the decision, I had already imagined things going wrong. So, if it finally goes wrong, the best I can do is to make sure I understand why it went wrong so I will make sure I won't repeat that same mistake in the future.
Thanks For Not Missing Any Full-stop or Comma.
Thumbnail Image is taken from Unsplash