Recently I was talking to a friend about decision making, she was stuck in a paralysing situation with the knowledge that whatever option she chose it would likely become a major turning point in her life. Mulling over the possibilities for months, weighing the pros and the cons and trying out both options had only left her wracked with the thought that whichever decision she made would ultimately leave her regretting the lost opportunities of the other.
The thing is, seemingly innocuous and unrelated actions like where you sit on a bus or who you talk to at a party also have the same potential to completely change your life or the path of your business. Of course these dots can only ever be connected in hindsight and we don’t worry ourselves over the hundreds of decisions we make every day.
It’s a problem that entrepreneurs and business owners face constantly, in fact you have to make so many different decisions that the real defining ones often get lost in the noise… Could that feature choice be costing you thousands of dollars a day or your last hire invent the killer feature that rockets your company to success?! All we can do is make the best decision possible with the information we have available at that moment.
So how do you make the best decision where everything else is even? Perhaps the answer is to minimize the possibility of regret. Not by focusing on the negatives but by choosing the option with the greatest potential payoff and bet on your own ability to achieve it.
And the friend? She’s still deciding…