It is easy to waste so much time when we struggle to make decisions. We delay necessary actions and create an opportunity for outside forces to influence us.

We get lost in the highlight reels and the social trends. We are obsessed with lifehacks and desperately search for absolute best practices.

We often look to experts for magic bullets, waiting for them to show us the most optimal ways to arrange our lives. We want someone else to define our ideal roadmap.

In a world where information is at our fingertips, it is easy to drown in the sea of possibilities and to second-guess ourselves. 

Except, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Every moment we spend in indecision keeps us away from the life we want. 

Now, there are significant life decisions that require pause and deliberations. That is a topic for another article.

This article will focus on more ordinary, everyday decisions that add up over time to create significant results in our lives.

Let us explore the magic of pre-deciding and how it can create clarity, minimize our dependence on willpower, and reduce outside noise. 

The Drawbacks of Delaying Decisions

You can miss opportunities.

Being indecisive can cause you to miss opportunities. If you hesitate, it may be too late by the time you decide. Someone else may have already seized the opportunity.

Waiting until the last minute to decide often leads to the inefficient management of time and execution of tasks. This is a good recipe for missing deadlines. 

Not deciding is a decision.

The biggest drawback of delaying making decisions is that you indirectly choose to forgo the benefits of those decisions. Let me explain.

Suppose you are struggling to start a new exercise regime because you are contemplating whether running, joining CrossFit, or beginning a barre class is the way to go.

While deliberating, you are missing out on the benefits of any exercise. You could just start walking or running while you explore other things. Most exercise facilities offer free or reduced-cost trial periods. 

If you don’t decide, someone else just might.

Until you decide for yourself, you are at the mercy of circumstances and outside forces to sway you one way or the other.

Imagine you have an important meeting first thing in the morning but want to attend a friend’s birthday party this evening. You can pre-decide that you will excuse yourself from the party no later than 10:00 pm.

If you don’t make that decision beforehand, it will be easy for your friends to convince you to stay later than you want.

You never take action.

When you become obsessed with making the most optimal decision, you become so afraid to make the wrong choice that you get lost in Analysis Paralysis. 

“Analysis paralysis is a state that you can find yourself in when feeling extraordinarily confused and overwhelmed around a certain situation or decision.”

VeryWellMind.com

Sometimes, instead of deciding to take the immediate next steps, you can start procrastinating by overplanning. You stall by trying to optimize everything on paper while never taking active steps. 

The Benefits of Pre-Decisions

Pre-deciding makes you efficient.

Making bulk decisions in advance is a form of automation. We have likely all heard about decision fatigue, which is the idea that too many choices can make us mentally fatigued and less effective. 

We make thousands of decisions, big and small, throughout the day. Pre-deciding once on a recurring situation can help free up our decision-making capacity. 

That is why we have seen a rise in famous personalities adopting uniforms and eating the same meals repeatedly. Deciding once saves them time and mental bandwidth over time.

Pre-decisions support desired behaviors.

The best way to ensure that you will do the right things, stick to your goals, and make the most of your time is to avoid making decisions when you feel mentally drained, physically taxed, or emotionally affected.

At that point, your decision-making power is impaired. When you are in the thick of things, you are reactive. You lose sight of the big picture and make decisions to benefit the short-term.

When your judgment is impaired, the best action is to follow precise and direct instructions from a level-headed, trusted advisor. By pre-deciding, you can be that advisor for yourself. Those instructions can come from your clearheaded, logical self.

Pre-decisions create clarity.

Pre-deciding what you need to accomplish on a specific day or in a particular timeframe provides a north star for what gets done. 

When unexpected circumstances arise, you will have the clarity to determine whether or not they contribute to what you set as a priority.

Similarly, when embarking on a new personal project, it is helpful to define early on what success will look like and how it will be measured. Fuzzy goals can make us unfocused and indecisive. 

The likelihood of success increases even more if you decide what is out of scope. By clarifying boundaries and limitations at the onset, you can prevent confusion and eliminate scope creep.

How to Implement Pre-Decisions

1. Decide when you are at your best

Most of us are at our best when we are rested, fed, comfortable, and optimistic. Many people are the most clearheaded first thing in the morning while they have a surplus of willpower.

Deciding early in the day or at the beginning of a new project clarifies outcomes and defines the parameters of your actions. 

The big picture is easier to see before we get into the weeds of doing things. This is why the early stages are a perfect time to decide on broad parameters that will shape the detailed work.

With straightforward guidance, the mind will eliminate unnecessary decision points throughout the day (or project) and default to following the previously identified course of action. 

Deciding early on what not to do is as important as choosing what to do. Identifying what is out of bounds helps us focus on what matters, eliminate distractions, and prevent scope creep.

2. Narrow down your options

Having too many options makes the decision process more difficult and increases the likelihood of being dissatisfied with anything we choose.

American psychologist Barry Schwartz explores this phenomenon in his famous book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, published in 2004.

“The paradox of choice suggests that an abundance of options actually requires more effort to choose and can leave us feeling unsatisfied with our choice.”

The Decision Lab

By quickly eliminating unsuitable options as soon as possible, you can free up your mental bandwidth and increase the likelihood of a satisfactory outcome.

3. Practice satisficing

Satisficing is a decision-making strategy that involves selecting the first option that meets a certain minimum threshold of acceptability or sufficiency rather than trying to find the optimal or best solution. 

With the abundance of options, it is unlikely that you will ever find the perfect, most optimal choice. But there is a high likelihood that you can find several options that more than adequately satisfy your needs.

To practice satisficing, define your criteria early on and evaluate your options based on that. When an option meets your criteria, you can feel confident moving forward and discarding other choices.

It is important to avoid second-guessing your choices or ruminating on them because there are likely no perfect solutions.

4. Plan for foreseeable obstacles

In many instances, you can identify the roadblocks ahead. It is helpful to decide in advance how to handle these situations.

You can use “if/then” decision models to prepare yourself. “If/then” thinking can be a robust framework for bypassing difficult choices under duress. 

By pre-deciding your behavior, you can choose actions aligned with your values. This will ensure you do not succumb to distractions, social pressure, and overwhelming emotions.

Similarly, preparing talking points for challenging or triggering conversations equips you with solid responses when you would usually get flustered. 

Practical Applications for Pre-Deciding

Below are some examples where pre-deciding can make a world of difference. These are mere suggestions, so modify them as you see fit!

Pre-decide in preparation for busy days and seasons:

• Pick out your clothes the night before when you have an early morning. Or do anything else that will simplify your morning.
• If it is about to be crunch time at work, schedule downtime on your calendar now. You will need breaks in order to stay the course.
• If school will be out next week and your children will be home, decide that your expectation is to achieve 75% of your normal productivity. Making peace with the fact that things will have to slow down can save you lots of frustration.
• If you have exams coming up, decide now that you will decline any social invitations on weekdays.

Pre-decide your desired behaviors:

• I will go to the gym as soon as I leave the office at 5 pm.
• If my meeting gets canceled, I will go for a short walk.
• At 10:00 am, I will make three sales calls.
• When I work from home, I will make a salad for lunch.
• If I have 30 minutes between meetings, I will work on my slides for the presentation next week.

Prepare firm yet graceful responses for when:

• You need to turn down an invitation on the spot.
• Someone brings up political views that you disagree with.
• Someone asks personal questions that make you uncomfortable.
• Someone pressures you to do something you don’t want to do.
• Someone invites you to an MLM sales party.

Pre-decision is a superpower! Use it to make your life easier.