Have you ever made a decision that you later regretted? I have…many times.
But after implementing this decision-making hack, the number of those bad decisions decreased dramatically.
For me I’ve taken on speaking engagements that I wasn’t sure of, worked with clients who I had doubts about, and invested in new business opportunities that I wasn’t really sure I wanted to do.
In each of these cases I had to decide, is this something I want to do or not?
Unfortunately, I didn’t really have a process for how to make decisions. I said yes to all sorts of things I should have never said yes to including things that I was just “luke warm” about.
How can you implement a short-cut to help you with the decision making process?
I made a video about this which you can see below. If you want more content like this then make sure to subscribe to the Be Your Own Boss Podcast Youtube Channel where my wife Blake and I teach you how you can be your own boss.
I struggled a lot with decision making until a leader I was working with gave me a hack that changed my life.
He said…
“Think of the decision you want to make and put it on on a scale of 1-10 with ten being ‘I absolutely want to do this!’ and 0 being ‘I never want to do this.’”
Thinking I was clever I said, “I’m at a 7.” Which as well all know isn’t terrible but it’s also not that great either.
In fact, many of us tend to default to 7 because it’s easy, it keeps us from making a definitive choice.
“Oh, and it can’t be a 7,” he said.
This one simple act of removing the7 from the grading scale made a huge difference!
Why?
Because a 6 isn’t that great so it’s easy to say “no” to.
An 8 is actually pretty good so that is easy to say “yes” to.
I’ve used this very simple decision making hack for many aspects of my life and business. It forces me to pick a side and avoid taking the easy way out by scoring everything as a 7.
Do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? Find out by taking this quiz which looks at “The Morgan’s 4 M’s of Entrepreneurship” which include Money, Mindset, Motivation, and Market.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a business leader inside of an organization, I think this decision-making hack can be quite useful to you and it can also be applied to many different aspects of work and life.
The whole point of all of this is forcing you to be decisive, which is a skill we can all get better at and dramatically benefit from.
Give it a shot. The next time you need to evaluate something or make a decision use the scale of 1-10 and remember…it can’t be a 7!
Hope you find this helpful.
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