Leaders spend a lot of time making choices and decisions. We often have to make dozens of them every single day. There can be pain in making a decision—sharing it, people reacting to it, worrying if it was a bad choice—and we often feel we can’t turn back and re-examine that choice. No wonder decision fatigue is a real thing. But it doesn’t have to be.
Here’s part of the challenge: We tend to look at decisions and choices individually, giving each its own weight. That’s why we sometimes ignore them or put off making them. But what if we looked at the course of our day (or week, or month) and placed our emphasis less on each individual choice but on getting better at the choosing?
Here are a few strategies to help us choose better:
• Map out what you’re spending your time on: Strategist Dan Sullivan teaches entrepreneurs how to decide what they should immediately stop doing, what they should delegate, and where they should truly invest their time. Try this. It’s amazing to see what happens when you intentionally guide the development of your time, moving it deeper and deeper toward what interests and inspires you. This can have a huge effect on how we make decisions.
• Review the big decisions you make: Twice a month, write down the decisions you made and reflect on the outcomes. Don’t beat yourself up over the bad ones, instead identify key learnings and incorporate them into your next decision.
• Strategize with your leadership team colleagues: Giving voice to these learnings helps us see how they affect other team members. At the same time, it helps us get to the root of a problem and challenge faster. Ultimately, by sharing, you’ll be able to develop systems and approaches that move you from reactive, to responsive, to proactive ways of working.
Having to make decisions isn’t going away, no matter how much we wish it would. But we can make the process less painful, more productive, and more efficient.