Presenter (James Lim) argues that emotions undermine good decision making by causing focus on immediate/first-order outcomes and creating blind spots; he recommends using a simple systematic process as cognitive scaffolding to enable consideration of second- and third-order consequences. He identifies two primary components for good decisions—1) Learning (gathering accurate, relevant information) and 2) Deciding (weighing and prioritizing that information)—and warns that taking advice from uninformed friends can distort your view. The talk closes with five practical takeaways (don’t believe everything you hear; do due diligence/step back; avoid impulsive decisions when unsure; reassess decisions over time; seek diverse, relevant opinions) and a teaser about converting the process into a rapid, reliable decision-making system in later videos.
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Making decisions is one of the most important and emotional things we have to deal with in life. It contributes to anxiety, consumes energy, causes us to procrastinate, can make us feel bad, and even once a decision is made, the negative energy can follow us like a bad smell. Was that the right decision? Should I have chosen the other option? It also constantly defines the direction our lives take. I am asked to help a lot of people with decision making and even paid to do so. I am truly blessed that they trust me with such a big part of their lives. As a result, I have spent the last few years honing my skills to make sure anything I say or do that may influence their choices is as robust as possible. I have also had the chance to see the outcomes of these decisions, how they play out from numerous people. I can then evaluate further optimal enhancements to my process. This, combined with my insatiable thirst to optimize and design my life, has given me a vast set of tools I draw from that I use and help others to navigate with. In this video we'll discuss why emotions are the poison for good decision making. How a simple systematic process will help instantly the two most important factors for good decision making why you should be careful who you ask five key points to take away that will instantly improve your decision making I have spent years and thousands of hours of learning and testing decision making models in the real world. Unfortunately, this is a process I generally love, however many of you don't. These videos are my attempt to distill some of that information into a concise package so you can walk away with some useful tools even in only a few minutes. So this is the first video in my decision making series. The content I have lined up I think is pretty juicy and I'm excited about sharing it. Please, please bear with me though. I'm new to this YouTube thing and it has been quite a challenge to get things rolling. Click the like button and drop a comment below if you like the sound of what's to come. Have you ever felt like your head wants to explode? When faced with a big decision, emotions tend to cause us to focus on immediate outcomes or first order consequences of our actions. When we see things as a threat to our lives in some way, this effect becomes more pronounced. However, big decisions usually impact us in much larger ways over longer periods of time. We therefore need to consider the second order and third order consequences. This can only be done with a systematic process and emotions can and do get in the way of this. They cause big blind spots in our thoughts and they interfere with our prioritization methods. A systematic process provides a framework your mind can lean and rest upon during these periods. It's kind of like the scaffolding for your brain that can help build your decision coherently when the weather is bad, your emotional period. So the two most important factors in order are 1. Learning 2. Deciding. Learning is about acquiring the knowledge you need for the decision. You are attempting to paint the truest picture for your reality for your brain to see. You can do this by researching online, reading books and speaking to various people. Deciding is the process of choosing which pieces of that knowledge you will draw from, weighing them. Prioritization, then determining a course of action, what to do about it. Learning and acquiring knowledge is so important you need to create the most accurate picture for your reality. If you acquire knowledge from the wrong sources, it will create a distorted view and may not be applicable to your reality. This is a significant process in itself and something I will go into in a separate video now. I bet you've asked your friends for advice. You have made your first critical and possibly crucial decision. Any future picture you form will be influenced by what they say or is very likely to have. Do you have a process for dealing with this information? How are you going to prioritize it? Should you take it seriously? How closely have you thought about their reality and how it blends with yours? Just because you are close friends, it doesn't mean that they are well informed or can understand the potential outcomes from your actions based on your situation. They may not themselves have a decision making process at all. The bottom line is listening to uninformed people is worse than having no answers at all. Five key points 1. Don't believe everything you hear. Opinions are everywhere and people are not only happy to share them, but it often boosts their ego. So be really careful. Sharing their wisdom doesn't often come at any risk to them. Therefore, they are unlikely to have done thorough checks themselves for reliability of their knowledge. Due diligence Everything looks bigger when you're in it. Try and step back and look at the bigger picture. If you build this into your process from the start, it helps when you're in the heat of the moment. If you are not confident of your decision making ability, don't make decisions impulsively. This is your emotional brain taking charge. Reassess your decision over a set period of time to allow for overweighting in certain criteria. You can and often will change your mind on a daily basis, so try and generally find the average. Seek opinions from others with a broad spectrum of backgrounds if possible. This helps triangulate your position, but really take your time and take care deciding who you will ask for advice. Remember they have the power to shape and distort your reality. This is potentially quite dangerous. Think about how relevant their reality is to yours and how much you trust their decision making processes in general. This is so important and I will be posting a video on this aspect in isolation. So that's it for this video. In one of my next videos in this series I will be sharing how you can convert this process into a rapid decision making system to get the Holy Grail which is fast decision making but something you can rely on. If you're interested in learning other practical methods to help find your way and improve your life, click on the subscribe button and hit the notification bell as I'll be releasing a lot of new content over the next few weeks. See you next time.
