Afraid of making irreversible decisions about your work, personal life or anything else?
In this fast-paced, ever-changing environment, a wrong decision can be mentally straining. And making decisions can be even more so draining.
Taking a decision can be very tough especially when you are young and decisions can leave a long lasting impact on your future.
Although there is no single way of making a decision and taking action, I have found doing the below three steps very helpful:
1) Making a pros and cons list
2)Taking advice from relevant people
3) Getting all facts and data on paper in front of me (very important)
But this is not about how to make the best decision. This is about how to make sure that your decision is well thought out. Not everyone might agree with this, so this is certainly not one size fits all.
When taking a decision, try imagining the worst-case scenario. What will happen if you take this decision and it doesn’t work out?
Let’s work with an example:
Assume you want to take a month-long break before your CA final exam. Now assume the worst-case scenario. What if you are not able to clear your exam?
Now question yourself: will you be able to cope with that failure? Will you be mentally prepared to study for another attempt? Will you be financially safe to delay getting a job? Will you be motivated enough to prepare with full force?
If you can answer all these questions and you know it's a 'yes', even if this is not the best decision, you know for a fact that you will be able to pick yourself back again even if things go south.
And if anything seems difficult for you then voila, there is your answer to either modify the decision or change it completely.
One more thing to check here is what will happen if you don’t take this decision. Evaluate and compare what is worse for you: taking the decision or not taking the decision
What is more manageable than the other?
There is no way of knowing what can go wrong and sometimes even if we were prepared to handle the worst, our environment or our mental health is not the same as before. Try to incorporate these factors while deciding anything.
This method might not work all the time but you will atleast know that you have made the decision as rationally as possible.