Ask HN: How to hack or get better at decision making?

1 pointquietthrow2 comments

I consider myself a thinker and find myself easily getting paralyzed by the choices that emerge when you think or analyze a problem. The good thing is I can see many possibilities and the bad thing is because of all the possibilities I find is very hard arrive at a decision. Would love to hear experience from people who are facing or have in the past faced this problem and how they deal/dealt with it.

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Psychological research suggests

(1) narrowing down to a series of binary choices:

Japanese or American brand? Japanese

Honda or Toyota? Honda.

SUV or car? Car

Civic or Accord? Accord

Used or new? New

Red or black? Red

(2) Decisions are emotional, not just logical. Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotions_in_decision-making.

A good example of this is people who experience damage to their prefrontal cortex. Not only do they experience changes to their emotions, they are unable to make decisions, deliberating extremely long for the simplest things.

http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/125/3/624.abstract

Easiest way is to remember that not making a decision is itself a decision, it's just one done with zero analysis, zero conscious thought, and usually zero positive impact on the world. In other words, most of the time it's the worst possible decision you can make. So do your research and just pick a course, even if it's not perfect, because you'll never have perfect information. You don't have to; you just have to be better than everyone else's information.

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