205: Making Difficult Decisions Easier Every Time

What is your system for making really difficult decisions?

For most of us, it includes pros/cons lists, collecting information about it thru research and of course the old standby: avoiding the decision and putting it off at all costs.

While I’ve been there (embarrassingly I didn’t choose my Best Man until the day of my wedding… then he had to make a speech on the fly), we know that pushing off difficult decisions ends up in worry, stress and really just isn’t that helpful to anyone. (Sorry Brandon!)

And what about the smaller decisions?

You know, the ones that are easier to make but eat up your energy and bandwidth throughout the day!

Ever heard of decision fatigue?

WHAT IF YOU HAD A SYSTEM TO HANDLE ALL OF YOUR DIFFICULT DECISIONS?

(At least the decisions that don’t involve selecting toothpaste, picking which brand of all natural peanut butter or deciding which restaurant menu item seems to be more healthy.)

How much easier would life be?

I bet you’d have less worry, stress and freaked out Best Men on your wedding day!

Plus, of course the added benefit of making better difficult decisions.

This is exactly why we brought on my friend Pete Mockaitis of “How to be Awesome at your Job”.

Pete has a two-step decision-making framework that he uses as he’s trying to optimize a career (or life) decision in front of him.

If you could use a stunningly simple and wildly effective system to make these difficult decisions, keep reading.

PETE’S 2-STEP DIFFICULT DECISION MAKING FRAMEWORK

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PART 1: IDENTIFY WHAT’S MOST IMPORTANT TO YOU.

The first part of Pete’s framework asks you to cut to the heart of the matter when weighing a potential decision. He asks:

What must be true for this to be a good move, good decision, and wise path? What are the key ingredients?

Let’s break this question down for a career move.

Let’s say you’re considering accepting a new job offer. You’re comfortable in your current job, but not elated, and looking for the next opportunity to grow and stretch you that also meets your needs in terms of flexibility and income. You have the flexibility and freedom to be picky and choosy for an ideal next step in your career path, and you’ve just started interviewing for a company that caught your attention.

If you pose yourself the question of: “What must be true for this to be a good move, good decision, and wise path?” you can see the key ingredients, based on the assumptions above about what I want, are:

• Will this opportunity stretch and grow me in ways I’m excited about?
• Will I get more flexibility in this next role in the ways that are most important to me?
• What kind of salary will I pull down here?
• Will the work be at least as much fun as what I’m doing now?
• What are the other tradeoffs (visible and invisible) involved in taking this opportunity?

Once you outline the questions, they are much easier to answer.

Some of them, you already have the knowledge or information to be able to answer, like “how long would the commute be?” or “. Some of them require you listening deeply to your gut instinct.

For other questions, though, you will need to do more research and due diligence work to get to the answers, like “Will I enjoy working with this team?”

To wrestle with questions like that one, that’s where Part 2 of the framework comes in.

PART 2: VALIDATE BEFORE YOU TRUST YOUR GUT COMPLETELY.

For the questions where the answer isn’t obvious, pose yourself this follow-up question:

“How do I test those things? How do I get a sneak peek or preview to see if it is the case?”

For example, if your success ingredient is that the new job opportunity must be more fun for you, but you don’t have enough data to know if that’s the case, asking yourself “how can I test it?” can be a powerful question.

Some ways you can test if a job would be fun for you include:

• Doing some of the tasks it will require of you on your own
• Asking if you can shadow with the team for a full or half day
• Doing the job in a freelance or contract capacity before upgrading to permanent full-time employee
• Write out a list of all the things that have been fun for you to do in the past and see if there’s overlap with the responsibilities in this role

Taking the time to test it out now before you make a big move can help you counter some of the risk of making a transition, and also give you more street cred and relevant experience to bring into the next job or opportunity you pursue.

With this framework, you can start approaching difficult decisions in your life with a new sense of confidence and assuredness that you’re gathering the right information to make a good decision for you.

If these ideas get you excited, comment below and tell us: what difficult decisions in your life are you agonizing over? When you apply this decision-making framework, what kind of questions do you need to test and validate before you decide?