On Making Decisions

We make many decisions everyday. Some small, some big. Yet, someone with better than average decision making will have significantly better outcomes compared to one that has an average decision making ability. Good decision making is a skill that compounds and thus it pays to focus on training your decision making muscles.

From my experience here are a few ways to improve your decision making:

1. Clarify your thinking. If you think clearly, you make clear decisions. How do you clarify your thinking? Learn to write. Writing is thinking and exposes your weak thoughts.

2. Mental Models. Mental models are a tool to identify the signal from the noise thus allowing one to make the right decision quickly. Mental models are naturally built through experience but this process can be accelerated through study. Farnam street has a lot of great content on this.

3. Meditation. We can choose to react with anger and frustration, or understanding and empathy. Most situations are not objectively negative or positive, its our decision how we may react to it. Often, negative emptions cloud our judgement and we end up making the wrong decision. Meditation is a way of controlling your emotions.