Guy Reams (00:01.582)
Day 177, the art of decision making. So, you know, throughout my life, I think I've undervalued the skill of decision making decisions. I've not considered the significant impact of decision processing on my time. I haven't considered the challenges I face when I don't do decisions quickly or how delayed or stalled my progress is in life while I wait to make up my mind.
I also haven't considered how much I've been set back by poor or incorrect decisions. So in my mind, decision making is probably one of the most important skills that you can learn in life. It's not something you ever get taught either. It's not something that you will find taught in school, not in high school. It wasn't taught to me in college and certainly not grad school. So I didn't learn decision making. Now I picked up.
some ideas around decision making throughout my life, but most decision making was learned by experience. However, you could potentially gain this skill by spending time studying some of the decision making models that are out there. Now that sounds a lot like watching paint dry. I mean, who wants to study a decision making model? But I do want to point out that there's quite a few...
decision -making models out there. There's probably 20 or 30 of them that I know of. Some of them have really fun acronyms like OODA, Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Some of them are named after the people that created them. Some of them are named after methodologies associated with decision -making. So there's quite a few of them out there.
I imagine not one is better than the other. I think any decision -making framework would be better than no decision -making framework, right? So, but, you know, think about it. If you're in leadership or you're leading people in a company or some other purpose, you know, I was told by somebody a while back ago, it always stuck with me, leaders, really, all that a leadership is, is making decisions. So if you're making 10 decisions a day,
Guy Reams (02:22.349)
and you make six out of the 10 that are good, then you'll do pretty well because six out of your 10 decisions were good. However, if you're making more bad decisions than good, then you'll be in decline. So learning to make good decisions and making them fast, so well -informed, swift decisions will be beneficial to us in our career and our lives. Now I came across the decision -making model created by a gentleman by the name of Herbert Simon. Herbert Simon created his own word called
Satisficing, yeah, I think that's the word. Basically, it's a combination of a couple of words to satisfy and to suffice. The reason he did that is because he felt that human decision making was bound by their cognitive ability or their understanding of the environment. He argued that no human could possibly understand the full consequences of their decision.
So it'd be impossible to make a completely well -informed decision. So therefore, you could only really make decisions that were sufficient or good enough for what you needed. And so you can make a decision that will satisfy your requirements and that will be sufficient for your needs. And so this takes the pressure off, this good enough attitude, takes the pressure off of making a thorough decision every time. Because he argued making a decision,
is better than making no decision or making a long -term delayed decision. This can apply to various aspects of your life. For example, a big decision that's probably harder for a lot of younger people is deciding what to do in their career. And so, oftentimes, people will delay this decision forever and, as a consequence, really hurt their ability to grow as a person. So it's best to make a decision.
even though you may not know all the information, but make a good enough decision. I'll give you an example of how that might apply to a decision -making criteria, right? So first, you would identify your criteria. Like you would determine what's important to you in a career, salary, job satisfaction, work -life balance, location, all those things. So make criterion for yourself, and then generate options. Come up with a list of options that you're satisfied with.
Guy Reams (04:42.829)
Then evaluate those options and ask yourself how well do they establish against your criteria. And then set a minimum acceptance level. Like what's the minimum salary level? What's the minimum criterion that you're establishing for yourself? So what would be sufficient to accomplish it? And then once you've done that, select the option that best meets or exceeds the minimum thresholds, and you're done. And then move on. Move on quickly. Make the decision and move on.
So that's just an example, but making swift and as good enough decisions as you can is why I think this model works for me. So in a world where decisions can dramatically impact our personal and professional life, we can adopt a practical and efficient decision -making model that's satisfying, but allows us to go faster. And by so doing, we can really see a lot of transformation, either in our lives or in the businesses that we live in.
Thank you.