Today is March 10 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is "How often do you work on your decision making process?"
Those that navigate the chaos often have multiple, simultaneous, and competing requests for their attention.
Thanks to the advent of technological advancements over the last three decades, there are now more choices for almost everything in life.
As David Brooks wrote in The New York Times “We can choose between a broader array of foods, media sources, lifestyles and identities. We have more freedom to live out our own sexual identities and more religious and nonreligious options to express our spiritual natures.” While new choices present exciting opportunities, the explosion of choice has also challenged the ability to make decisions.
The research suggests that the explosion of choice does not always provide a positive experience. For example, in their book Decisive, authors Chip and Dan Heath point out that 83 percent of corporate mergers and acquisitions do not increase shareholder value, 40 percent of senior hires do not last 18 months in their new position, and 44 percent of lawyers would recommend that a young person not follow them into the law.
As Brooks noted “It’s becoming incredibly important to learn to decide well, to develop the techniques of self-distancing to counteract the flaws in our own mental machinery.”
One person who developed an efficient decision making model was former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
He used this framework to prioritize what he should spend time working on, and determine what he should delegate or eliminate. Known as the Eisenhower Matrix, this decision making model allowed him to place any decision, activity, or task into one of four categories: 1)Urgent and important (tasks you will do immediately); 2)Important, but not urgent (tasks you will schedule to do later); 3)Urgent, but not important (tasks you will delegate to someone else); or 4)Neither urgent nor important (tasks that you will eliminate). How often do you work on your decision making process?
Bruce Lee observed “It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.”
An efficient decision making model can help you with your daily decrease.
As you go about your day consider asking yourself how often do you work on your decision making process?