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Easy Decision Making

5/20/2011

Pair #91 They don't call it Analysis Paralysis for nothing.

A peacefulness follows any decision, even the wrong one. ~Rita Mae Brown

Here is the square root of our daily stress. Decisions. We agonize at length over pros and cons, we have mind-maps and 'Why Trees' and 9-step models that help us over-cook the decision making process.

Even small decisions that don't always have a huge impact, will be whirled through the endless spin cycle of yes/no/maybe/do you think...?

Did you know that studies have shown that it is no more effective to ponder a decision than to simply pick based on first impression? It's about 50/50. In fact, according to research Mark Tyrell turned me onto, "many decisions you are better off not thinking about it."

I think we have so much trouble with decisions because underneath, we have turned the decision-making process wrong way round: toward ourselves. We think the big impact of our decision will be whether we turn out to be right or wrong, rather than realizing that some decisions don't matter that much, some are reversible if you get them wrong and most are not really life-threatening.

We are petrified of getting it wrong. Plus, we have a tendency to think our decision scorecard is the mark of our intelligence. Our fear of feeling bad about ourselves and looking bad to others is paralyzing. Western society prizes logical abilities and in general 'gut feel' gets relegated to the sidelines, only to be brought in in a pinch or a last resort after all of the avenues, fall-backs, consequences and pitfalls have been examined and exhausted.

It's worth looking to see if drawn out, over-thought decision-making is causing you sleepless nights, or taking up lots of your mental space.

The mind was meant for greater things than data analysis and endless agonizing.

© 2010 Elese Coit
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The Price of Multi-Tasking

5/6/2011

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Pair #90 Step into Clear Focus

If you have ever walked into the kitchen, opened the door to the refrigerator and then stood there wondering what you came for... welcome to the club.

Our ability to Focus, or not, was my topic for this week's show (archive) and it was a good one.

One of the topics that came up repeatedly in a recent training was how can what I teach help us to be able to focus and to still be able to do lots of things? It is as if we think that focus will slow us down somehow. That we won't get enough done if we stopped rushing around. So we wonder how can we rush around but still focus.

So how focused do you feel as you rush around? Isn't that precisely when you are more likely you leave the house and forget the lunch you packed?

I often hear people say that the solution to getting a lot done is to learn to multi-task better. Many times I've had clients tell me, "my problem is I'm just not that good at multi-tasking." We look with envy at others and their ability to be super-soccer Moms that juggle kids and high-pressure jobs. But should we?

On Yahoo recently people were talking about how AMAZING Obama is at multi-tasking, as one put it, Obama was dealing with "Birth certificate/Trump, Bin Laden, was in Florida for the shuttle launch (unfortunately postponed), spoke at the Correspondents Dinner, gave speeches on the budget, went on Oprah, all in the last week!"

I doubt that President Obama is managing all of these things on his lonesome and that his ability to keep the country ticking over is down to his great 'multi-tasking' but still, look at how we love and revere the multi-tasker! We imagine they are jetting from place to place while tapping into their iPad, signing up new business on the phone from a seat on an airplane all while writing a blog and the next great American novel and managing their children's homework via our revved up, multi-device, superhero lifestyles.

Then we are down on ourselves when we are not doing the same.

We can't see a way out that is any more profound than just getting more done.

We also intuitively know that when we are overloaded our work is poor quality, we become more forgetful and we are actually more likely to need to repeat what we've done or redo it.

Ever regretted pressing that 'SEND' button in the rush of trying to get through the inbox?

Research has long pointed to the fact that the human brain only processes one thing at a time. Recently studies are showing that our ability to pay attention, use memory and switch from one task to another is deteriorating. (Stanford report).

So where is our adoration for the joys of multi-tasking coming from? Is there real evidence that multi-focus is the new fabulousness?

We would do well to look beyond the anecdotal evidence that multi-tasking is good. Which is the better measure of our productivity, doing a bunch of things poorly, or doing a few things well? You don't have to choose, but if you did, which seems better to you?

What I want to suggest is that when we have true focus, we do tasks well, enjoy them more and complete them fully with fewer mistakes at a natural pace.

Let me suggest a few simple measures of whether or not you are using that kind of focus. Here is what being focused feels like:

good
connected
creatively juiced up
clarity
time irrelevance
completion

Here is what multi-tasking feels like:

rushing
behind the eight ball
strain
tiredness
clock-watching
doing over and over

Which would you choose?

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Easy Decision Making

The Price of Multi-Tasking

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