how to make good decisions essay

Essays About Choice: Top 5 Examples and 8 Prompts

Finding it hard to start your essays about choice? Here are our essay examples and prompts to inspire you. 

Making choices, whether big or small, makes up the very journey of our lives. Our choices are influenced by various factors, such as our preferences, beliefs, experiences, and cognitive capacity. Our choices unravel our lives and shape us into the person we choose to be. 

However, humans can easily be distracted and could be irrational when making choices. With this, new studies have emerged to learn more accurately about our thought processes and help us move beyond our limited rationality when making our choices. 

Read on and see our round-up of compelling essay examples and prompts to inspire you in writing your piece about choice.

1. The Art Of Decision-Making by Joshua Rothman

2. tactical generals: leaders, technology, and the perils by peter w. singer, 3. how your emotions influence your decisions by svetlana w. whitener, 4. how to choose the right pet for you by roxanna coldiron, 5. how to make money decisions when the future is uncertain by veronica dagher and julia carpenter, 1. the hardest but best choice in my life, 2. how to make good decisions, 3. “my body, my choice.”, 4. the consequences of bad choices, 5. how consumers make choices, 6. the rise of behavioral economics, 7. moral choices, 8. analyzed the poem “the road not taken.”.

“One of the paradoxes of life is that our big decisions are often less calculated than our small ones are. We agonize over what to stream on Netflix, then let TV shows persuade us to move to New York; buying a new laptop may involve weeks of Internet research, but the deliberations behind a life-changing breakup could consist of a few bottles of wine.”

The article dives deep into the mind’s methods of making choices. It tackles various theories and analyses from various writers and philosophers, such as the decision theory where you make a “multidimensional matrix” in coming up with the most viable choice based on your existing values and the “transformative experience” where today’s values may not determine your tomorrow but makes you fulfilled, nevertheless.

Check out these essays about reading and essays about the contemporary world .

“The challenge is that tactical generals often overestimate how much they really know about what happens on the ground. New technologies may give them an unprecedented view of the battlefield and the ability to reach into it as never before, but this view remains limited.”

Fourth industrial technologies such as artificial intelligence are everywhere and are now penetrating the military system, enabling generals to make more tactical choices. This development allows generals a broader insight into the situation, stripped of the emotional and human interventions that can spoil a rational and sound choice. However, these computer systems remain fraught with challenges and must be dealt with with caution.

“… emotions influence, skew or sometimes completely determine the outcome of a large number of decisions we are confronted with in a day. Therefore, it behooves all of us who want to make the best, most objective decisions to know all we can about emotions and their effect on our decision-making.”

Whitener stresses that external and hormonal factors significantly affect our decisions but determining the role and impact of our emotions helps us make positive decisions. This exercise requires being circumspect in our emotions in a given situation and, of course, not making a decision when under stress or pressure.  Check out these essays about respect .

“Whether we choose to adopt a cat, dog, rabbit, fish, bird, hamster, or guinea pig, knowing that we provide that animal with the best care that it needs is an important aspect of being a pet caretaker. But it’s also about the individual animal.”

Knowing which pet is best for you boils down to carefully evaluating your limits and lifestyle preference. This essay provides a list of questions you should first ask yourself regarding the time and energy you can commit before adopting a pet. It also provides a run-through of pets and their habits that can match your limits and preferences. 

How do I know when is a good time to invest? The article answers this burning financial question and many more amid a period of financial uncertainties propelled by the COVID-19 pandemic. It also provides tips, such as evaluating your short and long-term financial goals and tapping an accountant or financial adviser, to help readers make a confident choice in their finances. 

8 Prompts On essays about choice

Get creative with our list of prompts on choice:

What is now your best choice may have seemed a difficult one at first. So, talk about the situation where you had to make this hard decision. Then, lay down the lessons you have learned from analyzing the pros and cons of a situation and how you are now benefiting from this choice. Your scenarios can range from picking your school or course for college or dropping out some toxic friends or relatives. 

Making the right choice is a life skill, but it’s easier said than done. First, gather recent research studies that shed light on the various factors that affect how we come up with our choices. Then, look into the best practices to make good decisions based on what psychologists, therapists, and other experts recommend. Finally, to add a personal touch to your essay, describe how you make decisions that effectively result in positive outcomes.  

“My Body, My Choice” is a feminist slogan that refers to women’s right to choose what’s best for their bodies. The slogan aimed to resist the traditional practice of fixed marriages and fight for women’s reproductive rights, such as abortion. For this prompt, you may underscore the importance of listening to women when making policies and rules that involve their bodies and health. You may even discuss the controversial Roe v. Wade ruling and provide your insights on this landmark overturn of women’s rights to abortion.

Bad choices in major life decisions can lead to disastrous events. And we’ve all had our fair share of bad choices. So first, analyze why people tend to make bad decisions. Next, write about the common consequences students face when they fall into the trap of bad choices. Then, talk about an experience where your bad judgment led you to an undesirable situation. Finally, write the lessons you’ve learned from this experience and how this improved your life choices. 

How does a shopper’s mind work? Your essay can answer this through the lens of marketers. You can start by mapping out the stages consumers go through when choosing. Then, identify the fundamental principles that help marketers effectively drive more sales—finally, research how marketers are persuading their target audience through their branding imagery and emotional connection.

Behavioral economics combines the teaching of psychology and economics to study how humans arrive at their economic choices. The discipline challenges the fundamental principle in economic models, which assumes that humans make rational choices. First, provide a brief overview of behavioral economics and how it was born and evolved over the decades. Finally, offer insights on how you think behavioral economics can be adopted in private companies and government agencies to improve decision-making. 

First, define a moral choice. Then, enumerate the factors that can shape a moral choice, such as religion, ethics, culture, and gender. You can also zoom into a certain scenario that sparks debates on the morality of choice, such as in warfare when generals decide whether to drop a bomb or when to forge on or withdraw from a battle. Finally, you may also feature people in history who have managed to let their moral code prevail in their judgment and actions, even in the face of great danger.

Making choices and the opportunities one can miss out on are the central themes in this poem by Robert Frost. First, summarize the poem and analyze what the author says about making choices. Then, attempt to answer what the diverging roads represent and what taking the less traveled road signifies. Finally, narrate an event in your life when you made an unpopular choice. Share whether you regret the choice or ended up being satisfied with it.

If you are interested in learning more, check out our essay writing tips .

But if you’re still stuck, there’s no need to fret. Instead, check out our general resource of essay writing topics .

• Skip to main content
• Skip to secondary menu
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer

A Plus Topper

Improve your Grades

Decision Making Essay | Difference Between a Good Decision and a Bad Decision

October 18, 2021 by Prasanna

Decision Making Essay: Making decisions is an essential skill for many professions, but it’s also a skill that we need in our personal lives. We need to be able to make decisions not just for ourselves, but also for the people around us. The ability to make decisions is a skill that is mostly learned through experience. However, other ways to improve decision-making skills also exist – such as reading, researching, talking to other people as well as analyzing different sources of information.

Regardless, it is important to make decisions on your own. The first thing that you should do is to define the problem that you are trying to solve. You want to know why a decision is needed, what it will change about your life, and what’s important to you about the decision. After reviewing all of these factors, you should come up with some options for which way you want to go about solving the problem. In this essay, we shall explore the factors that influence the process of decision making as well as the repercussion of poor decision making.

You can also find more  Essay Writing articles on events, persons, sports, technology and many more.

Difference Between a Good Decision and a Bad Decision

One of the most important things to do when making decisions is to know the difference between a good decision and a bad decision. The primary difference between a good decision and a bad decision is the impact that it has on your life. As the name suggests, a good decision is one that has a positive impact on your life, while a bad decision will have a negative impact on your life.

Moreover, good decisions will usually lead to more opportunities. However, when you make bad decisions, it can have repercussions which are not immediately apparent, but can have long lasting consequences. To sum up, a good decision is one that achieves the desired goal. A bad decision is one that does not achieve the desired goal or achieves it in an undesirable way.

Why is Being Able to Make Decisions Essential for Success?

If you are able to make decisions quickly, you are more likely to be successful. The ability to make decisions quickly has always been an important part of being a successful professional. One of the most important skills required for making decisions is the ability to accept uncertainty.

There will always be unknowns when it comes to making decisions. As much as we try, there may never be enough information when it’s time to make a choice. However, making successful decisions requires you to process and interpret large volumes of data. Doing so is an effective way to ensure that the decisions made are well-educated and informed. Moreover, in a world of increasing complexity, it can be overwhelmingly hard to make the right decisions, hence, data analysis is an excellent tool for decision makers to use.

How to Become a Better Decision Maker?

Each day we make a series of decisions, from what we have for breakfast to which job to apply for. But how can we make better decisions?

Here are a few tips to consider when making important decisions:

Define the Problem

Before you can make a decision, you need to understand the issue at hand. When faced with a problem, take some time to figure out what is going on and why this is an issue. Moreover, learn to think critically about the problem you are trying to solve.

Be Aware Of Your Personal Biases And Beliefs

One of the most dangerous biases we have as humans is our confirmation bias. This bias happens when we selectively search and interpret information to confirm our preexisting beliefs. Unfortunately, this bias is very common and can lead to poor decisions, such as not hiring a new employee because they don’t fit into a desired archetype.

Gather information

You need to gather all the information you can on the problem. This starts with understanding the problem, but also includes your understanding of the context for this problem.

Consider alternatives and different perspectives

There are many benefits to being decisive, but there are also drawbacks. Remember to consider all points of view when making a decision. For example, you may think your idea is the best for the company, but if you provide feedback or ask others for their thoughts, they may give you new ideas that will better suit the company’s needs.

Take time to analyse and evaluate your decision

It can be difficult to think objectively and analyze your decision when you’re in a hurry, but it’s often helpful to take a step back and evaluate things more carefully. This is important because we might find new insights or different perspectives.

Tips to Consider When Making Decisions

Following are a few tips and points to consider when making an important decision:

• Ask yourself what outcome you require
• Consider what happens if you take action and also if you don’t
• Think about how much time and energy would be needed for the decision you need to make
• Consider the probability of achieving your desired outcome or goal if you take this course of action or if don’t take any action at all
• Think about the pros and cons associated with your chosen decision.

Biological Process and Mechanisms of Decision Making

Our brain controls most biological processes in our body. It is also responsible for controlling external factors like our intuition, past experiences, learning as well as decision making. Human emotional response is governed by two information-processing systems:

• Affective system: The affective system is a part of the human nervous system that is responsible for emotional arousal. Mechanisms in this system are not always logical and therefore less controllable. In other words, it’s the part of the brain that says “I’m hungry!” when you see a picture of a pizza or make you laugh when someone trips over their shoelace.
• Cognitive system : The cognitive system is activated when the person has to make a decision based on their thoughts. This system is more controlled and can override the affective system when making decisions. It’s vital to help control emotions, since it can affect how people make decisions.

These two systems are deeply intertwined with one another and impact cognition and the decision making process.

How the Environment Shapes our Decisions

Since the 1960s, environmental psychologists have proposed that our surroundings can affect our decisions, behaviors, and thoughts. These scientists have found that the physical environment may be an important factor in decreasing crime rates, increasing recycling, and improving academic performance. For instance, a study of 54 third graders found that children who were given a messy desk to work at were less likely to do their homework than children who were given perfectly neat desks. Many studies also showed that the environment in which an individual is brought up can influence certain behaviour. For example, a study by researchers from Cornell University found that there is a positive correlation between the wealth of an individual’s family and their academic performance. The study showed that families with incomes of $250,000 or more had an average GPA of 3.5 while the national average was 3.1. Other factors such as political uncertainty, economic instability or natural disasters can also hamper decision making processes.

Decision making skills are important for life, it is a skill that can help shape our futures. It influences how we spend our time, who we spend our time with, and what we do with the limited resources that we have. Moreover, we need to be able to make decisions not just for ourselves but also for the people around us. Hence, it is always better to be prepared and well-informed before making an important decision.

FAQ’s on Decision Making Essay

Question 1. What are the 5 stages of decision-making?

Answer: When making decisions, humans go through 5 specific stages. These stages are:

• recognition of the problem
• defining the problem
• generating possible solutions
• evaluating possible solutions
• choosing a solution

Question 2. Why is decision-making important?

Answer: Decision-making is one of the most important skills that everyone needs to have. It is the process of choosing between two or more things. Moreover, the decision that you make will have an effect on your life, so it’s important to do your research before making a decision.

Question 3. How to make a good decision?

Answer: In order to make a good decision, the individual should have the knowledge and skills to break down a problem into its constituent parts. They need to be creative in order to generate a range of possible solutions. They also need to be able to weigh the consequences of each solution and identify potential trade-offs. Finally, they need to implement a decision which is deemed feasible for the current problem.

• Picture Dictionary
• English Speech
• English Slogans
• English Letter Writing
• English Essay Writing
• English Textbook Answers
• Types of Certificates
• ICSE Solutions
• Selina ICSE Solutions
• ML Aggarwal Solutions
• HSSLive Plus One
• HSSLive Plus Two
• Kerala SSLC
• Distance Education

Type search request and press enter

9 Tips for Smarter Decision-Making

We tapped stanford experts from across disciplines to find out how the science of decision-making can help you choose better..

Reading time min

By Mike Vangel

E ach of your days involves thousands of decisions, most of them so tiny they pass before you even notice you’ve made them: Definitely wearing the socks with the bears today. Oatmeal or yogurt? Yogurt. Ugh, ignoring this email until I get to the office.

Then there are the ones that keep you awake at night, weighing job offers and career opportunities and wondering whether to rent or buy, start a family or relocate to another city. Complicating matters is that if you have a partner (or work as part of a team), some of your biggest decisions are cooperative ones.

It isn’t just you who feels overwhelmed. We’re bombarded with more information than ever before, which makes big decisions feel harder than they used to.

“In our media-rich, always-on world, many of us are living with an extreme cognitive load,” says neuroscientist and senior research scholar Brie Linkenhoker, MA ’01, PhD ’03. “When our brains are busy keeping lots of things ‘in mind’ or constantly switching attention, our decisions tend toward the default, the easy answer. We choose the comfort food. We spend to make ourselves feel better. We say yes to things that are easy to say yes to and no to things that are easy to say no to."

There’s a better way to make well-considered decisions that are in line with your values and goals. We asked Stanford experts for their insights about how the human brain decides, why we choose the things we do and, most important, how to make good decisions you can live with.

1. Own your biases.

We do a lot of our decision-making essentially on autopilot to free up cognitive resources for more difficult decisions, says Linkenhoker. “So, we’ve evolved in the human brain a set of heuristics, or rules of thumb.” Most of the time, these mental shortcuts work great, and it doesn’t matter so much that we’re not aware of them, such as when we’re driving to work or deciding what to make for dinner. But other times, she says, that awareness matters a lot. “It can become absolutely critical when a police officer is making an arrest, or when a leader is making a decision about a strategic investment or whom to hire.”

Understanding and being aware of your biases can help you make a better, more conscious decision. For example, Linkenhoker says, “People tend not to pay a lot of attention to a swing of $10,000 or $20,000 dollars when buying a house because it’s a small percentage of the whole price, and we tend to anchor our ideas about whether something is a big deal or not by comparing it with that initial number.” Knowing that you’re biased in this situation to think an extra $20,000 is no big deal allows you to stop and ask yourself whether it’s within your budget and whether the house is worth the additional money before you get caught up in a bidding war.

Another common bias, Linkenhoker says, is that of sunk costs: Once you’ve invested time or money into something, whether it’s a sweater or a project or a relationship, it’s hard to walk away, even when it makes more sense to. Recognizing that this bias is operating can help you decide whether it’s time to finally let go.

2. Ask the right questions.

If you’re trying to decide between two jobs, some of the most important questions to ask are about your own metanarrative of what you want in your life, now and in the future, says Linkenhoker. “Outside of the two jobs, what are the things that are most important to me?” Then you can move into asking, “How do these jobs fit with those goals? Are there any things that I really don’t want that I would have to put up with?’”

It’s also important to list the uncertainties and find out as much as you can about them. “The things we know can often loom really large in our decision-making, and things we don't know are easy to dismiss,” Linkenhoker says. So, for example, you’ve been offered a job with a great salary. But it’s a few towns away from where you live and you don’t know what the expectations are for being in the office or how long that commute will really take you during rush hour. If you’re inclined toward taking the job, it’s tempting to just assume these details will work themselves out. But before you jump to accept, do some homework; your resulting decision will be better informed.

3. Run it by a friend.

When you’re making decisions about where to live or what career path to pursue, it can help to turn to those who know you best. “We all create narratives about the decisions we’re making and why we’re making them,” says Linkenhoker. “Sometimes those stories are deeply rooted in who we are and what’s important to us, and other times, they’re kind of faulty, they're based on partial pieces of reality, on fantasies that we have about what our lives could look like.”

If you run some of those stories by someone who will give you honest feedback, she says, you’re more likely to spot the holes in your own story. “It’s good to have people who know you, who can hear and challenge the stories you tell yourself and help you gain coherence in the narrative about who you are and your goals and values,” she says. “That coherent narrative can really help guide you when you’re making tough decisions.”

4. Do the math (and then double-check your gut).

Imagine a disease that’s life-threatening but exceedingly rare; only 0.5 percent of the population has it. And let’s say there’s a test that’s 98 percent accurate at detecting whether a person has this disease, with only a 1 percent false-positive rate. Now let’s say you get screened for it during a routine physical, and you test positive. That 98 percent figure might inspire a decision to quit your job, sell your stuff, and hit the road in a retrofitted VW bus. Not that we’re saying this would be a bad thing. But hang on a hot second: As long as the test was random (and not prompted by symptoms or another factor), there’s only about a 1 in 3 chance that you actually have the disease.

In his undergrad class Introduction to Probability for Computer Scientists, computer science professor Mehran Sahami, ’92, MS ’93, PhD ’99, wants students to learn more than just formal probability. He also wants them to understand how their intuition can lead them astray.

The reason the results in above example are misleading has to do with the base rate. As Sahami explains, “The condition is so rare—so many [people] don’t have the disease—that even at a 1 percent false positive rate, that’s enough to swamp the test.” The math is pretty simple to work out, once you override your gut reaction and take a closer look at the numbers.

5. Remember that good decisions aren’t just about the numbers.

Many of the biggest decisions you make will likely affect other people. As a member of the advisory board for the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, Sahami spends a lot of time thinking about the ways computer science and probability are increasingly being used to make structural and systemic decisions in society. One example: using algorithms in the criminal justice system to help determine who will get out on bail. He cautions that trying to optimize your decision-making can skew your thinking. “One of the issues to consider is how [your decision] will potentially impact other people,” he says. “Think about what value that has in terms of your belief system and what you’re trying to achieve, and incorporate that into your decision-making.” Whether that’s a job offer that would relocate you and your partner across the country, or company practices that make you think you should be a corporate whistleblower, thinking about your options within this larger ethical frame can help you clarify difficult decisions and feel comfortable with their consequences.

6. Be ready to reevaluate.

Another common mistake, according to Sahami, is the tendency to misframe the probability of linked events. People will often think about the probability of something as if it happened in isolation, rather than realizing when another event has affected the outcome. Mathematically, the situations are pretty different, he says.

For example, when you buy lottery tickets, as the prize increases, people who might not have otherwise bought tickets often do, perceiving the value of the game to be higher. But as more people do this, Sahami explains, the probability changes. There’s a greater chance that multiple people will have winning tickets. That means even if you do win, you’ll be more likely to split the pot, something you ought to consider when deciding to buy a ticket.

Or, when you bought your car, there may have been a high probability you’d get 100,000 miles out of it. But once the car has been in an accident, the probability that it will reach its original predicted life span has changed—something you should take into consideration before you decide what damage to repair.

7. Don’t make assumptions. 

When you’re struggling to make a decision as part of a pair or a group, don’t assume you know another person’s perspective. Lindred Greer, an associate professor of organizational behavior whose research explores how teams make decisions, found that relatively small misunderstandings can escalate into wildly dysfunctional decision-making simply because people make assumptions about the behavior of others.

At a Bay Area start-up that Greer studied, meaningful decision-making regarding the company’s future was being affected by a petty disagreement about whether the kitchen fridge was stocked with Coke or Pepsi. “It became an issue at team meetings,” she says, “until one of the more savvy members asked why, and kept asking.” It turned out that the business team felt undervalued in comparison with the engineers, and saw soda as a small way to push back. “By asking why, [the team] was able to surface the real issue,” Greer says, and then change company culture to make the business team feel more integral.

Bottom line: Before you make a decision based on where you think other people are coming from, check to make sure you’ve got it right. It’ll help you get to a decision that works for everyone.

8. Incorporate diverse perspectives.

“If everyone thinks and acts the same way, you’ll all make the same mistakes,” Greer says. Case in point: Greer and a fellow researcher looked at data from people who had climbed Mount Everest. Some teams of climbers were composed of people from the same country, while other teams were more diverse. In general, she found that the homogenous teams made riskier decisions. And although they were somewhat more likely to summit Everest, she says, their members were also more likely to die along the way. “Collectivism blinded people,” she says.

It’s an extreme example, but it reveals something important: Diverse viewpoints lead to better decisions because they incorporate different areas of expertise and different ways of framing—and solving—problems. Greer is quick to point out that teams have greater success when their leaders know how to use that diversity by uniting people through a common vision. If you’re a team leader, “hire for diversity, but make sure you know how to utilize it well,” she says. “Provide a common vision, and articulate goals so that people are able to see how to work together.”

If you’re part of a team that’s not very diverse and you’re not in a position to change it, asking constructive questions of the group (such as “Why do you think that will work?” and “Is there another strategy we should consider?”) can help group members check their assumptions and arrive at better decisions. 

9. Take turns on special ops.

There are times when a decision-making hierarchy is necessary, Greer says: One person is the decider, and the others follow. Ideally, that hierarchy will adapt to the context. One of the best examples of this, she says, is the Navy SEALs: During a mission, they have a clear chain of command, but when it’s time to debrief, “they take their stripes off at the door.” The idea is to value each team member’s experience and expertise equally when evaluating past decisions and determining how to improve. By deemphasizing rank in those meetings, she says, the SEALs create an environment where people feel more welcome to speak up, which leads to better future decisions. In a business setting, she says, good leaders will use body language to communicate the shifting balance of power, leaning toward the group when they’re taking charge and then leaning back to listen so the whole group can evaluate a decision.

What’s good for missions and management also applies in other scenarios. Sometimes in a partnership, Greer says, there are situations when one person needs to make decisions and the other needs to follow. Halfway up a flight of stairs would not be the ideal place to discuss the best way to move your new washing machine into your apartment, for example. But for good decision-making that power dynamic needs to alternate, with partners trading off in the leadership role and sharing responsibility for other decisions, like which appliance to buy.

Mike Vangel is a writer in Minneapolis and a former assistant editor of S tanford .

Trending Stories

Law/Public Policy/Politics

Advice & Insights

• Shower or Bath?: Essential Answer

You May Also Like

Stanford Alumni Association

• Current Issue
• Past Issues
• Class Notes

Collections

• Recent Grads
• Mental Health
• After the Farm
• Stanford Secrets
• The Stanfords

Get in touch

• Letters to the Editor
• Submit an Obituary
• Accessibility
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Use
• Code of Conduct

• Stanford Home
• Maps & Directions
• Search Stanford
• Emergency Info
• Non-Discrimination

© Stanford University. Stanford, California 94305.

The Decision Making Guide: How to Make Smart Decisions and Avoid Bad Ones

What is decision making.

Let’s define decision making. Decision making is just what it sounds like: the action or process of making decisions. Sometimes we make logical decisions, but there are many times when we make emotional, irrational, and confusing choices. This page covers why we make poor decisions and discusses useful frameworks to expand your decision-making toolbox.

Why We Make Poor Decisions

I like to think of myself as a rational person, but I’m not one. The good news is it’s not just me — or you. We are all irrational. For a long time, researchers and economists believed that humans made logical, well-considered decisions. In recent decades, however, researchers have uncovered a wide range of mental errors that derail our thinking. The articles below outline where we often go wrong and what to do about it.

• 5 Common Mental Errors That Sway You From Making Good Decisions : Let’s talk about the mental errors that show up most frequently in our lives and break them down in easy-to-understand language. This article outlines how survivorship bias, loss aversion, the availability heuristic, anchoring, and confirmation bias sway you from making good decisions.
• How to Spot a Common Mental Error That Leads to Misguided Thinking : Hundreds of psychology studies have proven that we tend to overestimate the importance of events we can easily recall and underestimate the importance of events we have trouble recalling. Psychologists refer to this little brain mistake as an “illusory correlation.” In this article, we talk about a simple strategy you can use to spot your hidden assumptions and prevent yourself from making an illusory correlation.
• Two Harvard Professors Reveal One Reason Our Brains Love to Procrastinate : We have a tendency to care too much about our present selves and not enough about our future selves. If you want to beat procrastination and make better long-term choices, then you have to find a way to make your present self act in the best interest of your future self. This article breaks down three simple ways to do just that.

How to Use Mental Models for Smart Decision Making

The smartest way to improve your decision making skills is to learn mental models. A mental model is a framework or theory that helps to explain why the world works the way it does. Each mental model is a concept that helps us make sense of the world and offers a way of looking at the problems of life.

You can learn more about mental models , read how Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman uses mental models , or browse a few of the most important mental models below.

Top Mental Models to Improve Your Decision Making

• Margin of Safety: Always Leave Room for the Unexpected
• How to Solve Difficult Problems by Using the Inversion Technique
• Elon Musk and Bill Thurston on the Power of Thinking for Yourself

Best Decision Making Books

• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
• Poor Charlie’s Almanack  by Charles T. Munger
• Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevelin
• Decisive  by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Want more great books on decision making? Browse my full list of the best decision making books .

All Decision Making Articles

• The Ultimate Productivity Hack is Saying No
• Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds
• How Innovative Ideas Arise
• All Models Are Wrong, Some Are Useful
• The Downside of Work-Life Balance
• The 3 Stages of Failure in Life and Work (And How to Fix Them)
• The Value of Time: How Much is Your Time Really Worth?
• 5 Common Mental Errors That Sway You From Making Good Decisions
• Overrated vs. Underrated: Common Beliefs We Get Wrong
• How Experts Figure What to Focus On
• Warren Buffett’s “20 Slot” Rule: How to Simplify Your Life and Maximize Your Results
• The Ivy Lee Method: The Daily Routine Experts Recommend for Peak Productivity
• How to Optimize Your Daily Decisions
• How to Declutter Your Mind and Unleash Your Willpower by Using Bright-Line Rules
• Do More of What Already Works
• 5 Lessons on Being Wrong
• A Different Way of Thinking About Productivity
• Warren Buffett’s “2 List” Strategy: How to Maximize Your Focus and Master Your Priorities
• Let Your Values Drive Your Choices
• What to Do When You Have Too Many Ideas and Not Enough Time
• How to be More Productive and Eliminate Time Wasting Activities by Using the “Eisenhower Box”
• How Willpower Works: How to Avoid Bad Decisions
• How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the “2-Minute Rule”
• How to Focus and Concentrate Better
• Decision Making
• Life Lessons
• Productivity
• Self-Improvement

30 Days to Better Habits: A simple step-by-step guide for forming habits that stick

• Take the guesswork out of habit-building. 11 email lessons walk you through the first 30 days of a habit step-by-step, so you know exactly what to do.
• Get the tools and strategies you need to take action. The course includes a 20-page PDF workbook (including templates and cheatsheets), plus new examples and applications that you can’t find in Atomic Habits. 
• Learn a framework that works for any habit. You can use this course to build any good habit – from getting fit, to saving for an early retirement, to daily meditation.

Enroll in the free email course and get your first lesson today

Home — Essay Samples — Business — Decision Making — The Importance of Effective Decision Making

The Importance of Effective Decision Making

• Categories: Decision Making Universal Health Care

About this sample

Words: 517 |

Published: Jul 10, 2019

Words: 517 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Cite this Essay

To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below:

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Prof. Kifaru

Verified writer

• Expert in: Business Nursing & Health

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 1099 words

7 pages / 3045 words

2 pages / 829 words

3 pages / 1419 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Decision Making

What is business? From its most basic roots, business is producing or providing some form of good or service, and ideally trading that good or service for either money, or something else of value. Over time, the definition of [...]

Berger, J. (2003). Career indecision and environmental stress. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 62(2), 185-203.Brown, S. D., & Lent, R. W. (2013). Career Development and Counseling: Putting Theory and Research to Work (2nd ed.). [...]

Decision making is an essential skill that individuals use to navigate through life's complex and challenging situations. Whether it's choosing a career path, making financial decisions, or deciding on personal matters, the [...]

Decision making is an essential aspect of human life that impacts various aspects of our personal and professional lives. It involves the process of choosing a course of action from several alternatives to achieve desired [...]

Imagine a room filled with passionate voices, each vying for their viewpoint to be heard. The atmosphere is charged with anticipation and tension, as the fate of an entire city hangs in the balance. Welcome to the world of the [...]

What do you do when your heart says yes but your head says no. The heart refers to emotional decision making, a strong feeling, such as love, joy, anger, hate, or fear that helps you make a decision. While the head refers to [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Advertisement

Top 10 ways to make better decisions

By Kate Douglas and Dan Jones

Decisions, decisions! Our lives are full of them, from the small and mundane, such as what to wear or eat, to the life-changing, such as whether to get married and to whom, what job to take and how to bring up our children. We jealously guard our right to choose. It is central to our individuality: the very definition of free will. Yet sometimes we make bad decisions that leave us unhappy or full of regret. Can science help?

Making good decisions requires us to balance the seemingly antithetical forces of emotion and rationality. We must be able to predict the future, accurately perceive the present situation, have insight into the minds of others and deal with uncertainty.

Most of us are ignorant of the mental processes that lie behind our decisions, but this has become a hot topic for investigation, and luckily what psychologists and neurobiologists are finding may help us all make better choices. Here we bring together some of their many fascinating discoveries in the New Scientist guide to making up your mind.

1 Don’t fear the consequences

Whether it’s choosing between a long weekend in Paris or a trip to the ski slopes, a new car versus a bigger house, or even who to marry, almost every decision we make entails predicting the future. In each case we imagine how the outcomes of our choices will make us feel, and what the emotional or “hedonic” consequences of our actions will be. Sensibly, we usually plump for the option that we think will make us the happiest overall.

This “affective forecasting” is fine in theory. The only problem is that we are not very good at it. People routinely overestimate the impact of decision outcomes and life events, both good and bad. We tend to think that winning the lottery will make us happier than it actually will, and that life would be completely unbearable if we were to lose the use of our legs. “The hedonic consequences of most events are less intense and briefer than most people imagine,” says psychologist Daniel Gilbert from Harvard University. This is as true for trivial events such as going to a great restaurant, as it is for major ones such as losing a job or a kidney.

• Take our expert-led online neuroscience course to discover how your brain works

A major factor leading us to make bad predictions is “loss aversion” – the belief that a loss will hurt more than a corresponding gain will please. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman from Princeton University has found, for instance, that most people are unwilling to accept a 50:50 bet unless the amount they could win is roughly twice the amount they might lose. So most people would only gamble £5 on the flip of a coin if they could win more than £10. Yet Gilbert and his colleagues have recently shown that while loss aversion affected people’s choices, when they did lose they found it much less painful than they had anticipated ( Psychological Science , vol 17, p 649). He puts this down to our unsung psychological resilience and our ability to rationalise almost any situation. “We’re very good at finding new ways to see the world that make it a better place for us to live in,” he says.

So what is a poor affective forecaster supposed to do? Rather than looking inwards and imagining how a given outcome might make you feel, try to find someone who has made the same decision or choice, and see how they felt. Remember also that whatever the future holds, it will probably hurt or please you less than you imagine. Finally, don’t always play it safe. The worst might never happen – and if it does you have the psychological resilience to cope.

“Whatever the future holds it will hurt or please you less than you imagine”

2 Go with your gut instincts

It is tempting to think that to make good decisions you need time to systematically weigh up all the pros and cons of various alternatives, but sometimes a snap judgement or instinctive choice is just as good, if not better.

In our everyday lives, we make fast and competent decisions about who to trust and interact with. Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov from Princeton University found that we make judgements about a person’s trustworthiness, competence, aggressiveness, likeability and attractiveness within the first 100 milliseconds of seeing a new face. Given longer to look – up to 1 second – the researchers found observers hardly revised their views, they only became more confident in their snap decisions ( Psychological Science , vol 17, p 592).

Of course, as you get to know someone better you refine your first impressions. It stands to reason that extra information can help you make well-informed, rational decisions. Yet paradoxically, sometimes the more information you have the better off you may be going with your instincts. Information overload can be a problem in all sorts of situations, from choosing a school for your child to picking a holiday destination. At times like these, you may be better off avoiding conscious deliberation and instead leave the decision to your unconscious brain, as research by Ap Dijksterhuis and colleagues from the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands shows ( Science , vol 311, p 1005).

They asked students to choose one of four hypothetical cars, based either on a simple list of four specifications such as mileage and legroom, or a longer list of 12 such features. Some subjects then got a few minutes to think about the alternatives before making their decision, while others had to spend that time solving anagrams. What Dijksterhuis found was that faced with a simple choice, subjects picked better cars if they could think things through. When confronted by a complex decision, however, they became bamboozled and actually made the best choices when they did not consciously analyse the options.

Dijksterhuis and his team found a similar pattern in the real world. When making simple purchases, such as clothes or kitchen accessories, shoppers were happier with their decisions a few weeks later if they had rationally weighed up the alternatives. For more complex purchases such as furniture, however, those who relied on their gut instinct ended up happier. The researchers conclude that this kind of unconscious decision-making can be successfully applied way beyond the shopping mall into areas including politics and management.

But before you throw away your lists of pros and cons, a word of caution. If the choice you face is highly emotive, your instincts may not serve you well. At the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Francisco this February, Joseph Arvai from Michigan State University in East Lansing described a study in which he and Robyn Wilson from The Ohio State University in Columbus asked people to consider two common risks in US state parks – crime and damage to property by white-tailed deer. When asked to decide which was most urgently in need of management, most people chose crime, even when it was doing far less damage than the deer. Arvai puts this down to the negative emotions that crime incites. “The emotional responses that are conjured up by problems like terrorism and crime are so strong that most people don’t factor in the empirical evidence when making decisions,” he says.

3 Consider your emotions

You might think that emotions are the enemy of decision-making, but in fact they are integral to it. Our most basic emotions evolved to enable us to make rapid and unconscious choices in situations that threaten our survival. Fear leads to flight or fight, disgust leads to avoidance. Yet the role of emotions in decision-making goes way deeper than these knee-jerk responses. Whenever you make up your mind, your limbic system – the brain’s emotional centre – is active. Neurobiologist Antonio Damasio from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles has studied people with damage to only the emotional parts of their brains, and found that they were crippled by indecision, unable to make even the most basic choices, such as what to wear or eat. Damasio speculates that this may be because our brains store emotional memories of past choices, which we use to inform present decisions.

Emotions are clearly a crucial component in the neurobiology of choice, but whether they always allow us to make the right decisions is another matter. If you try to make choices under the influence of an emotion it can seriously affect the outcome.

Take anger. Daniel Fessler and colleagues from the University of California, Los Angeles, induced anger in a group of subjects by getting them to write an essay recalling an experience that made them see red. They then got them to play a game in which they were presented with a simple choice: either take a guaranteed $15 payout, or gamble for more with the prospect of gaining nothing. The researchers found that men, but not women, gambled more when they were angry ( Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes , vol 95, p 107).

In another experiment, Fessler and colleague Kevin Haley discovered that angry people were less generous in the ultimatum game – in which one person is given a sum of money and told to share it with an anonymous partner, who must accept the offer otherwise neither gets anything. A third study by Nitika Garg, Jeffrey Inman and Vikas Mittal from the University of Chicago found that angry consumers were more likely to opt for the first thing they were offered rather than considering other alternatives. It seems that anger can make us impetuous, selfish and risk-prone.

Disgust also has some interesting effects. “Disgust protects against contamination,” says Fessler. “The initial response is information-gathering, followed by repulsion.” That helps explain why in their gambling experiments, Fessler’s team found that disgust leads to caution, particularly in women. Disgust also seems to make us more censorious in our moral judgements. Thalia Wheatley from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and Jonathan Haidt from the University of Virginia, used hypnosis to induce disgust in response to arbitrary words, then asked people to rate the moral status of various actions, including incest between cousins, eating one’s dog and bribery. In the most extreme example, people who had read a word that cued disgust went so far as to express moral censure of blameless Dan, a student councillor who was merely organising discussion meetings ( Psychological Science , vol 16, p 780).

All emotions affect our thinking and motivation, so it may be best to avoid making important decisions under their influence. Yet strangely there is one emotion that seems to help us make good choices. In their study, the Chicago researchers found that sad people took time to consider the various alternatives on offer, and ended up making the best choices. In fact many studies show that depressed people have the most realistic take on the world. Psychologists have even coined a name for it: depressive realism.

4 Play the devil’s advocate

Have you ever had an argument with someone about a vexatious issue such as immigration or the death penalty and been frustrated because they only drew on evidence that supported their opinions and conveniently ignored anything to the contrary? This is the ubiquitous confirmation bias. It can be infuriating in others, but we are all susceptible every time we weigh up evidence to guide our decision-making.

If you doubt it, try this famous illustration of the confirmation bias called the Wason card selection task. Four cards are laid out each with a letter on one side and a number on the other. You can see D, A, 2 and 5 and must turn over those cards that will allow you to decide if the following statement is true: “If there is a D on one side, there is a 5 on the other”.

Typically, 75 per cent of people pick the D and 5, reasoning that if these have a 5 and a D respectively on their flip sides, this confirms the rule. But look again. Although you are required to prove that if there is a D on one side, there is a 5 on the other, the statement says nothing about what letters might be on the reverse of a 5. So the 5 card is irrelevant. Instead of trying to confirm the theory, the way to test it is to try to disprove it. The correct answer is D (if the reverse isn’t 5, the statement is false) and 2 (if there’s a D on the other side, the statement is false).

The confirmation bias is a problem if we believe we are making a decision by rationally weighing up alternatives, when in fact we already have a favoured option that we simply want to justify. Our tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people’s judgement is affected by the confirmation bias, while denying it in ourselves, makes matters worse ( Trends in Cognitive Sciences , vol 11, p 37).

If you want to make good choices, you need to do more than latch on to facts and figures that support the option you already suspect is the best. Admittedly, actively searching for evidence that could prove you wrong is a painful process, and requires self-discipline. That may be too much to ask of many people much of the time. “Perhaps it’s enough to realise that we’re unlikely to be truly objective,” says psychologist Ray Nickerson at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. “Just recognising that this bias exists, and that we’re all subject to it, is probably a good thing.” At the very least, we might hold our views a little less dogmatically and choose with a bit more humility.

“Searching for evidence that could prove you wrong is a painful process”

5 Keep your eye on the ball

Our decisions and judgements have a strange and disconcerting habit of becoming attached to arbitrary or irrelevant facts and figures. In a classic study that introduced this so-called “anchoring effect”, Kahneman and the late Amos Tversky asked participants to spin a “wheel of fortune” with numbers ranging from 0 to 100, and afterwards to estimate what percentage of United Nations countries were African. Unknown to the subjects, the wheel was rigged to stop at either 10 or 65. Although this had nothing to do with the subsequent question, the effect on people’s answers was dramatic. On average, participants presented with a 10 on the wheel gave an estimate of 25 per cent, while the figure for those who got 65 was 45 per cent. It seems they had taken their cue from the spin of a wheel.

Anchoring is likely to kick in whenever we are required to make a decision based on very limited information. With little to go on, we seem more prone to latch onto irrelevancies and let them sway our judgement. It can also take a more concrete form, however. We are all in danger of falling foul of the anchoring effect every time we walk into a shop and see a nice shirt or dress marked “reduced”. That’s because the original price serves as an anchor against which we compare the discounted price, making it look like a bargain even if in absolute terms it is expensive.

What should you do if you think you are succumbing to the anchoring effect? “It is very hard to shake,” admits psychologist Tom Gilovich of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. One strategy might be to create your own counterbalancing anchors, but even this has its problems. “You don’t know how much you have been affected by an anchor, so it’s hard to compensate for it,” says Gilovich.

6 Don’t cry over spilt milk

Does this sound familiar? You are at an expensive restaurant, the food is fantastic, but you’ve eaten so much you are starting to feel queasy. You know you should leave the rest of your dessert, but you feel compelled to polish it off despite a growing sense of nausea. Or what about this? At the back of your wardrobe lurks an ill-fitting and outdated item of clothing. It is taking up precious space but you cannot bring yourself to throw it away because you spent a fortune on it and you have hardly worn it.

The force behind both these bad decisions is called the sunk cost fallacy. In the 1980s, Hal Arkes and Catherine Blumer from The Ohio State University demonstrated just how easily we can be duped by it. They got students to imagine that they had bought a weekend skiing trip to Michigan for $100, and then discovered an even cheaper deal to a better resort – $50 for a weekend in Wisconsin. Only after shelling out for both trips were the students told that they were on the same weekend. What would they do? Surprisingly, most opted for the less appealing but more expensive trip because of the greater cost already invested in it.

The reason behind this is the more we invest in something, the more commitment we feel towards it. The investment needn’t be financial. Who hasn’t persevered with a tedious book or an ill-judged friendship long after it would have been wise to cut their losses? Nobody is immune to the sunk cost fallacy. In the 1970s, the British and French governments fell for it when they continued investing heavily in the Concorde project well past the point when it became clear that developing the aircraft was not economically justifiable. Even stock-market traders are susceptible, often waiting far too long to ditch shares that are plummeting in price.

“The more we invest in something the more committed we feel to it”

To avoid letting sunk cost influence your decision-making, always remind yourself that the past is the past and what’s spent is spent. We all hate to make a loss, but sometimes the wise option is to stop throwing good money after bad. “If at the time of considering whether to end a project you wouldn’t initiate it, then it’s probably not a good idea to continue,” says Arkes.

7 Look at it another way

Consider this hypothetical situation. Your home town faces an outbreak of a disease that will kill 600 people if nothing is done. To combat it you can choose either programme A, which will save 200 people, or programme B, which has a one in three chance of saving 600 people but also a two in three chance of saving nobody. Which do you choose?

Now consider this situation. You are faced with the same disease and the same number of fatalities, but this time programme A will result in the certain death of 400 people, whereas programme B has a one in three chance of zero deaths and a two in three chance of 600 deaths.

You probably noticed that both situations are the same, and in terms of probability the outcome is identical whatever you pick. Yet most people instinctively go for A in the first scenario and B in the second. It is a classic case of the “framing effect”, in which the choices we make are irrationally coloured by the way the alternatives are presented. In particular, we have a strong bias towards options that seem to involve gains, and an aversion to ones that seem to involve losses. That is why programme A appears better in the first scenario and programme B in the second. It also explains why healthy snacks tend to be marketed as “90 per cent fat free” rather than “10 per cent fat” and why we are more likely to buy anything from an idea to insurance if it is sold on its benefits alone.

At other times, the decisive framing factor is whether we see a choice as part of a bigger picture or as separate from previous decisions. Race-goers, for example, tend to consider each race as an individual betting opportunity, until the end of the day, when they see the final race as a chance to make up for their losses throughout the day. That explains the finding that punters are most likely to bet on an outsider in the final race.

In a study published last year, Benedetto De Martino and Ray Dolan from University College London used functional MRI to probe the brain’s response to framing effects ( Science , vol 313, p 660). In each round, volunteers were given a stake, say £50, and then told to choose between a sure-fire option, such as “keep £30” or “lose £20”, or a gamble that would give them the same pay-off on average. When the fixed option was presented as a gain (keep £30), they gambled 43 per cent of the time. When it was presented as a loss (lose £20), they gambled 62 per cent of time. All were susceptible to this bias, although some far more so than others.

The brain scans showed that when a person went with the framing effect, there was lots of activity in their amygdala, part of the brain’s emotional centre. De Martino was interested to find that people who were least susceptible had just as much activity in their amygdala. They were better able to suppress this initial emotional response, however, by drawing into play another part of the brain called the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex, which has strong connections to both the amygdala and parts of the brain involved in rational thought. De Martino notes that people with damage to this brain region tend to be more impulsive. “Imagine it as the thing that tunes the emotional response,” he says.

Does that mean we can learn to recognise framing effects and ignore them? “I don’t know,” says De Martino, “but knowing that we have a bias is important.” He believes this way of thinking probably evolved because it allows us to include subtle contextual information in decision-making. Unfortunately that sometimes leads to bad decisions in today’s world, where we deal with more abstract concepts and statistical information. There is some evidence that experience and a better education can help counteract this, but even those of us most prone to the framing effect can take a simple measure to avoid it: look at your options from more than one angle.

8 Beware social pressure

You may think of yourself as a single-minded individual and not at all the kind of person to let others influence you, but the fact is that no one is immune to social pressure. Countless experiments have revealed that even the most normal, well-adjusted people can be swayed by figures of authority and their peers to make terrible decisions ( New Scientist , 14 April, p 42).

In one classic study, Stanley Milgram of Yale University persuaded volunteers to administer electric shocks to someone behind a screen. It was a set-up, but the subjects didn’t know that and on Milgram’s insistence many continued upping the voltage until the recipient was apparently unconscious. In 1989, a similar deference to authority played a part in the death of 47 people, when a plane crashed into a motorway just short of East Midlands airport in the UK. One of the engines had caught fire shortly after take-off and the captain shut down the wrong one. A member of the cabin crew realised the error but decided not to question his authority.

The power of peer pressure can also lead to bad choices both inside and outside the lab. In 1971, an experiment at Stanford University in California famously had to be stopped when a group of ordinary students who had been assigned to act as prison guards started mentally abusing another group acting as prisoners. Since then studies have shown that groups of like-minded individuals tend to talk themselves into extreme positions, and that groups of peers are more likely to choose risky options than people acting alone. These effects help explain all sorts of choices we might think are unwise, from the dangerous antics of gangs of teenage boys to the radicalism of some animal-rights activists and cult members.

How can you avoid the malign influence of social pressure? First, if you suspect you are making a choice because you think it is what your boss would want, think again. If you are a member of a group or committee, never assume that the group knows best, and if you find everyone agreeing, play the contrarian. Finally, beware situations in which you feel you have little individual responsibility – that is when you are most likely to make irresponsible choices.

“If you find everyone in your group agreeing, play the contrarian”

Although there is no doubt that social pressure can adversely affect our judgement, there are occasions when it can be harnessed as a force for good. In a recent experiment researchers led by Robert Cialdini of Arizona State University in Tempe looked at ways to promote environmentally friendly choices. They placed cards in hotel rooms encouraging guests to reuse their towels either out of respect for the environment, for the sake of future generations, or because the majority of guests did so. Peer pressure turned out to be 30 per cent more effective than the other motivators.

9 Limit your options

You probably think that more choice is better than less – Starbucks certainly does – but consider these findings. People offered too many alternative ways to invest for their retirement become less likely to invest at all; and people get more pleasure from choosing a chocolate from a selection of five than when they pick the same sweet from a selection of 30.

These are two of the discoveries made by psychologist Sheena Iyengar from Columbia University, New York, who studies the paradox of choice – the idea that while we think more choice is best, often less is more. The problem is that greater choice usually comes at a price. It makes greater demands on your information-processing skills, and the process can be confusing, time-consuming and at worst can lead to paralysis: you spend so much time weighing up the alternatives that you end up doing nothing. In addition, more choice also increases the chances of your making a mistake, so you can end up feeling less satisfied with your choice because of a niggling fear that you have missed a better opportunity.

The paradox of choice applies to us all, but it hits some people harder than others. Worst affected are “maximisers” – people who seek the best they can get by examining all the possible options before they make up their mind. This strategy can work well when choice is limited, but flounders when things become too complex. “Satisficers” – people who tend to choose the first option that meets their preset threshold of requirements – suffer least. Psychologists believe this is the way most of us choose a romantic partner from among the millions of possible dates.

“If you’re out to find ‘good enough’, a lot of the pressure is off and the task of choosing something in the sea of limitless choice becomes more manageable,” says Barry Schwartz, a psychologist at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania. When he investigated maximising and satisficing strategies among college leavers entering the job market, he found that although maximisers ended up in jobs with an average starting salary 20 per cent higher than satisficers, they were actually less satisfied. “By every psychological outcome we could measure they felt worse – they were more depressed, frustrated and anxious,” says Schwartz.

Even when “good enough” is not objectively the best choice, it may be the one that makes you happiest. So instead of exhaustively trawling through the websites and catalogues in search of your ideal digital camera or garden barbecue, try asking a friend if they are happy with theirs. If they are, it will probably do for you too, says Schwartz. Even in situations when a choice seems too important to simply satisfice, you should try to limit the number of options you consider. “I think maximising really does people in when the choice set gets too large,” says Schwartz.

10 Have someone else choose

We tend to believe that we will always be happier being in control than having someone else choose for us. Yet sometimes, no matter what the outcome of a decision, the actual process of making it can leave us feeling dissatisfied. Then it may be better to relinquish control.

Last year, Simona Botti from Cornell University and Ann McGill from the University of Chicago published a series of experiments that explore this idea (Journal of Consumer Research, vol 33, p 211). First they gave volunteers a list of four items, each of which was described by four attributes, and asked them to choose one. They were given either a pleasant choice between types of coffee or chocolate, or an unpleasant one between different bad smells. Once the choice was made they completed questionnaires to rate their levels of satisfaction with the outcome and to indicate how they felt about making the decision.

As you might expect, people given a choice of pleasant options tended to be very satisfied with the item they picked and happily took the credit for making a good decision. When the choice was between nasty options, though, dissatisfaction was rife: people did not like their choice, and what’s more, they tended to blame themselves for ending up with something distasteful. It didn’t even matter that this was the least bad option, they still felt bad about it. They would have been happier not to choose at all.

In a similar experiment, subjects had to choose without any information to guide them. This time they were all less satisfied than people who had simply been assigned an option. The reason, say the researchers, is that the choosers couldn’t give themselves credit even if they ended up with a good option, yet still felt burdened by the thought that they might not have chosen the best alternative. Even when choosers had a little information – though not enough to feel responsible for the outcome – they felt no happier choosing than being chosen for.

Botti believes these findings have broad implications for any decision that is either trivial or distasteful. Try letting someone else choose the wine at a restaurant or a machine pick the numbers on your lottery ticket, for example. You might also feel happier about leaving some decisions to the state or a professional. Botti’s latest work suggests that people prefer having a doctor make choices about which treatment they should have, or whether to remove life support from a seriously premature baby. “There is a fixation with choice, a belief that it brings happiness,” she says. “Sometimes it doesn’t.”

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox! We'll also keep you up to date with New Scientist events and special offers.

More from New Scientist

Explore the latest news, articles and features

Environment

The jet stream may be starting to shift in response to climate change.

Subscriber-only

AI helps find simple charging trick to boost battery lifespan

Sharks leap out of the water more often than you might think

Mathematics

The mathematical theory that made the internet possible, popular articles.

Trending New Scientist articles

Password reminder

Custom essay help for you, advice for a decision making essay.

It is difficult to make decisions sometimes, but it is even more challenging to write a decision making essay. Therefore, to help you with this tough task we offer you a few hints on what to write about in your essay about decision making.

Importance of the Proper Making Decisions Process

The good decision defines your success. Thus, you should better learn more on critical thinking and decision making, as this information and skills will help you a lot in your life. Being well-aware of how to find effective solutions will help you to avoid failures and manage your time without any losses.

Decision Making Essay: Explain the Process

A good decision is not always easy to get. To do everything properly, one needs to follow the next steps:

       1. You Should Identify the Problem You Are Dealing with

It is necessary to find out, what you are actually dealing with. State the case you need to get a decision for.

       2. Search for Information

To make sure what you are fully aware of the issue, gather more information about it. You should benefit from the online and offline sources.

       3. Analyze the Situation

Now you should think of the conditions of the situation that actually takes place. Analyze all the factors, which influence it and put it into logical connections with other situations.

       4. Develop the Possible Solutions

It is high time to think what can be done. Note all the possible solutions that need to be reviewed.

       5. Critically Evaluate the Options

You should think of the pluses and minuses of each possible solution you have found. This will make you close to actual making a final decision. You can draw a simple table for an each option. There should be 4 columns: strength, weakness, opportunities and threats of the option. This is known to be a SWOT analysis, which is widely used in Business Studies, Finance etc.

       6. Select the Best Option

There is the best plan of actions among the suggested ones, so choose the one based on your analysis. Obviously, the best option is the one that has the most pluses and the least minuses if to compare with others. This will be your way to resolve the situation.

       7. Act!

Making a decision without acting is pointless. Thus, proceed to the most important step of the whole process and apply the solution in practice!

Options to Get Helped in Decision Making

Sometimes we need some help in decision making. Indeed, it is a good idea to discuss the issue with a person, who is an expert in the field you need to deal with.

• Act in Groups

Having a group of experts in various fields helps a lot, since you can fully overview the issue and be aware of all the difficulties faced. Every group member is able to express his own opinion on the situation and provide an in-depth analysis from the point of view he is professional in.

• Discuss the Problem with an Expert

There is a point to talk to the expert directly. Our company has a numerous team of experts in different fields, so we will definitely find an appropriate helper for you. Your assistant will not only help you to make the best possible decision, but he is always ready to write a good and qualitative decision making essay.

Leave a comment:

Your email address will not be published.

High School

Undergraduate 1-2, undergraduate 3-4.

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

6 Reasons We Make Bad Decisions, and What to Do About Them

You make thousands of decisions every day.

Consistently making good decisions is arguably the most important habit we can develop, especially at work. But some things are detrimental to good decision-making. When you have to make an important decision, be on the lookout for decision fatigue. Our ability to perform mental tasks and make decisions wears thin when it’s repeatedly exerted. Decision-making effectiveness suffers by up to 40% when we focus on two cognitive tasks at the same time. So when you need to make important decisions, carve out and commit to several blocks of time during the day to focus deeply on the task at hand. Emotions, especially during moments of peak anger and happiness, can also hinder our ability to make good decisions. Pay attention to your emotional state, and resist the temptation to respond to people or make decisions while you’re emotionally keyed up. Practice walking away from the computer or putting the phone down, and return to the task at hand when you’re able to think more clearly and calmly.

Research has shown that the typical person makes about 2,000 decisions every waking hour . Most decisions are minor and we make them instinctively or automatically — what to wear to work in the morning, whether to eat lunch now or in ten minutes, etc. But many of the decisions we make throughout the day take real thought, and have serious consequences. Consistently making good decisions is arguably the most important habit we can develop, especially at work. Our choices affect our health, our safety, our relationships, how we spend our time, and our overall well-being. Based on my experiences from three deployments as an Army officer and from researching Lead Yourself First , I’ve found the following mindsets to be detrimental to good decision-making. When you have to make an important decision, be on the lookout for:

• ME Mike Erwin is the co-author of Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude and CEO of the Character & Leadership Center . He is also the president of The Positivity Project and a Lt. Colonel in the Army Reserve, assigned to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point as an Assistant Professor in Leadership & Psychology.

Partner Center

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base
• How to structure an essay: Templates and tips

How to Structure an Essay | Tips & Templates

Published on September 18, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

The basic structure of an essay always consists of an introduction , a body , and a conclusion . But for many students, the most difficult part of structuring an essay is deciding how to organize information within the body.

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Upload your document to correct all your mistakes in minutes

Table of contents

The basics of essay structure, chronological structure, compare-and-contrast structure, problems-methods-solutions structure, signposting to clarify your structure, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about essay structure.

There are two main things to keep in mind when working on your essay structure: making sure to include the right information in each part, and deciding how you’ll organize the information within the body.

Parts of an essay

The three parts that make up all essays are described in the table below.

Order of information

You’ll also have to consider how to present information within the body. There are a few general principles that can guide you here.

The first is that your argument should move from the simplest claim to the most complex . The body of a good argumentative essay often begins with simple and widely accepted claims, and then moves towards more complex and contentious ones.

For example, you might begin by describing a generally accepted philosophical concept, and then apply it to a new topic. The grounding in the general concept will allow the reader to understand your unique application of it.

The second principle is that background information should appear towards the beginning of your essay . General background is presented in the introduction. If you have additional background to present, this information will usually come at the start of the body.

The third principle is that everything in your essay should be relevant to the thesis . Ask yourself whether each piece of information advances your argument or provides necessary background. And make sure that the text clearly expresses each piece of information’s relevance.

The sections below present several organizational templates for essays: the chronological approach, the compare-and-contrast approach, and the problems-methods-solutions approach.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

The chronological approach (sometimes called the cause-and-effect approach) is probably the simplest way to structure an essay. It just means discussing events in the order in which they occurred, discussing how they are related (i.e. the cause and effect involved) as you go.

A chronological approach can be useful when your essay is about a series of events. Don’t rule out other approaches, though—even when the chronological approach is the obvious one, you might be able to bring out more with a different structure.

Explore the tabs below to see a general template and a specific example outline from an essay on the invention of the printing press.

• Thesis statement
• Discussion of event/period
• Consequences
• Importance of topic
• Strong closing statement
• Claim that the printing press marks the end of the Middle Ages
• Background on the low levels of literacy before the printing press
• Thesis statement: The invention of the printing press increased circulation of information in Europe, paving the way for the Reformation
• High levels of illiteracy in medieval Europe
• Literacy and thus knowledge and education were mainly the domain of religious and political elites
• Consequence: this discouraged political and religious change
• Invention of the printing press in 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg
• Implications of the new technology for book production
• Consequence: Rapid spread of the technology and the printing of the Gutenberg Bible
• Trend for translating the Bible into vernacular languages during the years following the printing press’s invention
• Luther’s own translation of the Bible during the Reformation
• Consequence: The large-scale effects the Reformation would have on religion and politics
• Summarize the history described
• Stress the significance of the printing press to the events of this period

Essays with two or more main subjects are often structured around comparing and contrasting . For example, a literary analysis essay might compare two different texts, and an argumentative essay might compare the strengths of different arguments.

There are two main ways of structuring a compare-and-contrast essay: the alternating method, and the block method.

Alternating

In the alternating method, each paragraph compares your subjects in terms of a specific point of comparison. These points of comparison are therefore what defines each paragraph.

The tabs below show a general template for this structure, and a specific example for an essay comparing and contrasting distance learning with traditional classroom learning.

• Synthesis of arguments
• Topical relevance of distance learning in lockdown
• Increasing prevalence of distance learning over the last decade
• Thesis statement: While distance learning has certain advantages, it introduces multiple new accessibility issues that must be addressed for it to be as effective as classroom learning
• Classroom learning: Ease of identifying difficulties and privately discussing them
• Distance learning: Difficulty of noticing and unobtrusively helping
• Classroom learning: Difficulties accessing the classroom (disability, distance travelled from home)
• Distance learning: Difficulties with online work (lack of tech literacy, unreliable connection, distractions)
• Classroom learning: Tends to encourage personal engagement among students and with teacher, more relaxed social environment
• Distance learning: Greater ability to reach out to teacher privately
• Sum up, emphasize that distance learning introduces more difficulties than it solves
• Stress the importance of addressing issues with distance learning as it becomes increasingly common
• Distance learning may prove to be the future, but it still has a long way to go

In the block method, each subject is covered all in one go, potentially across multiple paragraphs. For example, you might write two paragraphs about your first subject and then two about your second subject, making comparisons back to the first.

The tabs again show a general template, followed by another essay on distance learning, this time with the body structured in blocks.

• Point 1 (compare)
• Point 2 (compare)
• Point 3 (compare)
• Point 4 (compare)
• Advantages: Flexibility, accessibility
• Disadvantages: Discomfort, challenges for those with poor internet or tech literacy
• Advantages: Potential for teacher to discuss issues with a student in a separate private call
• Disadvantages: Difficulty of identifying struggling students and aiding them unobtrusively, lack of personal interaction among students
• Advantages: More accessible to those with low tech literacy, equality of all sharing one learning environment
• Disadvantages: Students must live close enough to attend, commutes may vary, classrooms not always accessible for disabled students
• Advantages: Ease of picking up on signs a student is struggling, more personal interaction among students
• Disadvantages: May be harder for students to approach teacher privately in person to raise issues

An essay that concerns a specific problem (practical or theoretical) may be structured according to the problems-methods-solutions approach.

This is just what it sounds like: You define the problem, characterize a method or theory that may solve it, and finally analyze the problem, using this method or theory to arrive at a solution. If the problem is theoretical, the solution might be the analysis you present in the essay itself; otherwise, you might just present a proposed solution.

The tabs below show a template for this structure and an example outline for an essay about the problem of fake news.

• Introduce the problem
• Provide background
• Describe your approach to solving it
• Define the problem precisely
• Describe why it’s important
• Indicate previous approaches to the problem
• Present your new approach, and why it’s better
• Apply the new method or theory to the problem
• Indicate the solution you arrive at by doing so
• Assess (potential or actual) effectiveness of solution
• Describe the implications
• Problem: The growth of “fake news” online
• Prevalence of polarized/conspiracy-focused news sources online
• Thesis statement: Rather than attempting to stamp out online fake news through social media moderation, an effective approach to combating it must work with educational institutions to improve media literacy
• Definition: Deliberate disinformation designed to spread virally online
• Popularization of the term, growth of the phenomenon
• Previous approaches: Labeling and moderation on social media platforms
• Critique: This approach feeds conspiracies; the real solution is to improve media literacy so users can better identify fake news
• Greater emphasis should be placed on media literacy education in schools
• This allows people to assess news sources independently, rather than just being told which ones to trust
• This is a long-term solution but could be highly effective
• It would require significant organization and investment, but would equip people to judge news sources more effectively
• Rather than trying to contain the spread of fake news, we must teach the next generation not to fall for it

Here's why students love Scribbr's proofreading services

Discover proofreading & editing

Signposting means guiding the reader through your essay with language that describes or hints at the structure of what follows.  It can help you clarify your structure for yourself as well as helping your reader follow your ideas.

The essay overview

In longer essays whose body is split into multiple named sections, the introduction often ends with an overview of the rest of the essay. This gives a brief description of the main idea or argument of each section.

The overview allows the reader to immediately understand what will be covered in the essay and in what order. Though it describes what  comes later in the text, it is generally written in the present tense . The following example is from a literary analysis essay on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

Transitions

Transition words and phrases are used throughout all good essays to link together different ideas. They help guide the reader through your text, and an essay that uses them effectively will be much easier to follow.

Various different relationships can be expressed by transition words, as shown in this example.

Because Hitler failed to respond to the British ultimatum, France and the UK declared war on Germany. Although it was an outcome the Allies had hoped to avoid, they were prepared to back up their ultimatum in order to combat the existential threat posed by the Third Reich.

Transition sentences may be included to transition between different paragraphs or sections of an essay. A good transition sentence moves the reader on to the next topic while indicating how it relates to the previous one.

… Distance learning, then, seems to improve accessibility in some ways while representing a step backwards in others.

However , considering the issue of personal interaction among students presents a different picture.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

College essays

• Choosing Essay Topic
• Write a College Essay
• Write a Diversity Essay
• College Essay Format & Structure
• Comparing and Contrasting in an Essay

 (AI) Tools

• Grammar Checker
• Paraphrasing Tool
• Text Summarizer
• AI Detector
• Plagiarism Checker
• Citation Generator

The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

An essay isn’t just a loose collection of facts and ideas. Instead, it should be centered on an overarching argument (summarized in your thesis statement ) that every part of the essay relates to.

The way you structure your essay is crucial to presenting your argument coherently. A well-structured essay helps your reader follow the logic of your ideas and understand your overall point.

Comparisons in essays are generally structured in one of two ways:

• The alternating method, where you compare your subjects side by side according to one specific aspect at a time.
• The block method, where you cover each subject separately in its entirety.

It’s also possible to combine both methods, for example by writing a full paragraph on each of your topics and then a final paragraph contrasting the two according to a specific metric.

You should try to follow your outline as you write your essay . However, if your ideas change or it becomes clear that your structure could be better, it’s okay to depart from your essay outline . Just make sure you know why you’re doing so.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2023, July 23). How to Structure an Essay | Tips & Templates. Scribbr. Retrieved September 3, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/essay-structure/

Is this article helpful?

Jack Caulfield

Other students also liked, comparing and contrasting in an essay | tips & examples, how to write the body of an essay | drafting & redrafting, transition sentences | tips & examples for clear writing, "i thought ai proofreading was useless but..".

I've been using Scribbr for years now and I know it's a service that won't disappoint. It does a good job spotting mistakes”

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Student Opinion

How Do You Make Hard Decisions?

Some decisions are more difficult than others. What path do you choose when there isn’t a clear best choice?

By Jeremy Engle

Should you cut your hair — or perhaps dye it? Should you finally ask that special someone out on a date? Should you join a sports team, get an after school job or perhaps run for class president? Where should you go to college, or what should you do after high school?

How do you go about making a big decision? Talk to friends? Make a list of pluses and minuses? Go with your gut? Sleep on it? Flip a coin? Would you say you are a decisive person? Or do you agonize over every possibility until you are worn out by decision fatigue?

In the Opinion essay “ How to Make a Decision When There’s No ‘Right’ One ,” Russ Roberts writes about an agonizing choice made by the English naturalist Charles Darwin — whether to get married or devote his life to science — and what lessons we can draw nearly 200 years later:

In 1838, Charles Darwin faced a problem. Nearing his 30th birthday, he was trying to decide whether to marry — with the likelihood that children would be part of the package. To help make his decision, Darwin made a list of the expected pluses and minuses of marrying. On the left-hand side he tried to imagine what it would be like to be married (“constant companion,” “object to be beloved & played with — better than a dog anyhow”). On the right-hand side he tried to imagine what it would be like not to marry (“not forced to visit relatives & to bend in every trifle”). Darwin was struggling with what I call a wild problem — a fork in the road of life where knowing which path is the right one isn’t obvious, where the day-to-day pleasure and pain from choosing one path over another are ultimately hidden from us and where those day-to-day pleasures and pains don’t fully capture what’s at stake. There might be a mere handful of such decisions like this that we face — whether to marry, whom to marry, whether to have children, whether to switch careers and take on new responsibilities. Often there is little evidence to guide us, and what little evidence is available can mislead us. How should we proceed, then, especially if we want to make a rational decision?

After analyzing Darwin’s detailed list of plus and minuses, Mr. Roberts writes that the rational naturalist and future evolution theorist ultimately seems to toss aside his cost-benefit analysis for a more emotional perspective:

Most of Darwin’s list seems to point him toward a life of staying single. Yet he decided to marry, seemingly putting his sober list of pluses and minuses aside, writing in a much more emotional vein: My God, it is intolerable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working & nothing after all. — No, no won’t do. — Imagine living all one’s day solitarily in smoky dirty London house. — Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire & books & music perhaps. — Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Grt. Marlbro’ St. Marry — Mary — Marry Q.E.D. Less than a year later, Darwin married his cousin Emma Wedgwood. Together they had 10 children; seven survived to adulthood. And somehow, despite or perhaps because of his decision to go through life with a wife and children at his side, Darwin managed to become one of the greatest scientists of all time and forever changed our understanding of who we human beings are. But why did Darwin ignore the calm, cerebral calculus he laid out in his journal? What’s the lesson to be learned from his decision-making process? I have to speculate a little here, but I think he realized, as most of us do, that life is about more than just the sum of the day-to-day pleasures and pains that follow from our choices. Adding up costs and benefits — what I call narrow utilitarianism — may seem like the height of rationality. But it can easily undervalue the most important but less obvious aspects of a life well lived. A broader view doesn’t always point to marriage. It can also point to staying single or getting divorced. But the important lesson is to think about life as more than accumulating pleasure or avoiding pain.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

Decision Making Essay Examples and Topics

Back bay battery strategic innovation simulation, the case of “energetics meets generex”: negotiations, the role of management information system (mis) in business.

• Words: 4372

Three perspectives in the organisational theory

• Words: 3459

Advantages and Disadvantages of Problem Solving and Group Decision Making

• Words: 1878

Pichai’s Decision-Making Process at Google and Alphabet

• Words: 1062

Kepner-Tregoe Technique Application to Problem Solving

• Words: 2992

Creative Intelligence Styles’ Comparison and Influence

Wal-mart company’s decision making process, seven-step process for ethical decision-making.

• Words: 1301

Bad vs. Wrong Decisions in Decision Making

The role of data in business decision-making, problem solving process at the workplace.

• Words: 1390

Decision-Making Strategies and Techniques

• Words: 1413

Microsoft Corporation’s Decision-Making Strategy

Psychological traps in the human decision making.

• Words: 1995

The Use of Algorithms in Decision-Making

Business decision making: concepts and terminology of statistics.

• Subjects: Brand Management

Career Choices and Factors Influencing Those Choices

• Words: 1155

Utility Theory. “The Thinker’s Toolkit” by Jones

Decision making in the hospitality industry, telstra company knowledge management.

• Words: 3065

Delayed Decision Making and Its Consequences

Xyz company: operations decision.

• Words: 1159

Brainstorming, Nominal and Delphi Decision-Making

• Words: 1101

Making a Decision to Do Business Abroad

Problem solving aspects in business, johnson and johnson: the decision-making process, the buying decision making by individual, the opportunity cost importance in decision making, factors affecting the effectiveness of the decision-making process.

• Words: 10250

A Theory’s Practicality in Business

Economic data in business decisions.

• Words: 2138

Business Ethics and Stakeholder Management

Decision making in an import and export organization, cost-benefit analysis, its strengths and weaknesses.

• Words: 1150

Decision-Making Process in Selecting a University

Lenovo company’s decision-making process.

• Words: 1693

Model- and Data-Driven Decision Support Systems

The importance of forecasting on sales management decision making.

• Words: 1721

Starbucks: Decision Maker’s Functions

Strategic and tactical planning in management.

• Words: 1146

Decision-Making Process in Healthcare Sector

• Words: 1457

Group Decision-Making and Related Challenges

Australian airline qantas decision making.

• Words: 1135

Business Decision Making Methods and Examples

• Words: 5083

Decision-Making With Managerial Accounting

• Words: 1779

Design Management in H&M

• Words: 5037

Leadership Styles in the UK, USA, and Japan

• Words: 1705

Rational Decision Making Regarding Car Purchase

Leasing decisions’ effect on financial leverage, ethical decision-making model for cultural hiring, buying process: decision-making.

• Words: 2762

Sustainability, Decision-Making, and Business Ethics

Neuroscience of decision-making, making financial decisions on investment in education.

• Words: 1184

Decision-Making Techniques: Analysis

Elastic and inelastic demand and pricing decisions.

• Words: 1152

Data Analysis Techniques for Decision Making

The planning and decision-making concepts, researching of behavioral economics, emotional intelligence and emotional management, frtech: decision-making process.

• Words: 2527

Evidence-Informed Decision Making in Healthcare

• Words: 1436

Aspects of IT in Decision-Making

• Words: 1220

Estimated Travel Costs for Two Graduates

Religious beliefs in business decision-making, a decision-making process at the workplace, discussion of decision matrix analysis, decision-making in a workplace.

• Words: 1003

Overconfidence in the Trading Activity Context

• Words: 1406

Innovation and Technology Management and Decision Making

Craft managerial styles and heuristics.

• Words: 1397

Styles of Decision-Making, and Management of Personality of School Principals

• Words: 1379

Decision-Making Models and Diplomatic Approaches

• Words: 1442

Elements Involved in Decision-Making

Review of modern data analysis trends, discussion of supply and demand, multi-criteria decision-making techniques, decision-making in the workplace after covid-19, the business conflict: red-holdings case, the decision-making of toledo leather company, decision support system, business intelligence and examples of analytics, decision-analysis and problem-solving techniques.

• Words: 1948

Change Management and Decision-Making

Data use and validity in business, decision-making actions from organizational behavior perspective, influence of intuition on the decision-making process, ethics vignette and resolution: case study.

• Words: 1446

Healthy Hiring: Ecommerce Help Wanted

Tips to improve the decision-making process, how a manager can use hypothetical budget figures for decision making, nike: covid implications and possible solutions.

• Words: 1489

Conflicts in the Workplace: Solving and Decision-Making

• Words: 1024

Decision Making in Organizations

Predictive modeling fundamentals and decision trees, multi-criteria decision analysis methods.

• Words: 1393

A Bias of Screening Study by Lagziel and Lehrer

Home depot firm’s decision-making under uncertainty.

• Words: 1187

Relation Between Investments and Education

• Words: 1673

Making the Best Decisions and Solving Common Social Problems

The need for a limited liability partnership, ethical decision making and information technology.

• Words: 2437

MYOB Software Contribution to Business Decision-Making

Vulnerability in the construction industry: revising objectives in the light of cyber threats, regression analysis in business analytics, forecasting strategy of seven cycles, decision making: thinking and reasoning, creative problem solving in production management, an analysis of pay policies, decision-making in business: help our homeless offspring, accounting for decision making and financial stability, decision making and benefits: cincinnati flow technology, analysis of law decision making, decision-making and global implications of perceptions, decision-making in a multinational environment, survey of local services, a decision of uncertainty, informed decisions toolbox within the organizational setting.

• Words: 1139

Decision Theory and Real Estate Investment

Decision-Making

10 steps to making decisions you’ll never regret, balancing head and heart is key to making the “right” decision. here’s how..

Posted September 2, 2024 | Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer

• Each day we make hundreds of decisions that all shape our reality, identity, and story.
• Too often we are oblivious to the feelings, thoughts, emotions, and sensations that drive our actions.
• Mindful decision-making requires pausing and following these 10 steps.

Thinking back on the most pivotal moments in my life makes me realize how profoundly different the outcomes were when I paused to really consider the decisions in front of me. Hard won wisdom has reinforced that a gut instinct (which can be helpful, and ought to be factored into any decision-making process) is decisively not the same thing as wish fulfillment (which, if rashly followed, often leads to negative outcomes).

So often we go through life oblivious to the feelings, thoughts, emotions, and sensations that are driving our actions. Clearly, for big decisions, this oversight can have significant effects, but it is also true for seemingly small ones. During the day, we make hundreds of decisions—from when to get out of bed, to what to eat, how to organize our time or engage with others, and what behavior is right and wrong. The truth is that all these decisions shape our reality, identity , and story.

Making the best, most meaningful, constructive, and ethical decisions—because, yes, following your system of “right and wrong” matters—requires a mindful approach, one that will help you to distinguish between competing options and to balance reason and prudence with emotion , gut, and desire.

Steps for making more mindful decisions

Consider the following steps to help you make better, more mindful decisions—ones that you can feel good about and live with without regret.

• Make time and clear your mind. You can’t be rash when trying to “do right.” Slow down. Get grounded . Make sure you’re in your “ window of tolerance .” Find a productive environment in which to think—this doesn’t mean the often-heralded “neutral” space. Instead, attune your mind to something that inspires you or makes you feel comfortable yet alive. Then, take a deep breath and get to work.
• Identify the challenge before you. Know what you want to achieve. Make sure you have a clear understanding of what you are considering. Ask yourself, “Is ‘this’ the best, most accurate way of presenting the issue? What am I missing or overlooking?” Don’t assume the obvious way is the only way. Consider at least two alternatives, and then choose the one that pairs your gut and grounded reason.
• Determine goals , both short- and long-term. Ask yourself, “What do I need , want , and desire to get out of this decision?” (need is a survival must; “want” is a nice-to-have; and “desire” is what you long for, based in meaning and purpose). Then prioritize around which of these are most important. Challenge yourself to see the bigger picture. Look at the situation from 30,000 feet. Check in with yourself about what emotions, feelings, beliefs, etc. are driving your conclusions. Try not to get lost in the weeds of immediate gratification.
• Get smart. Know the relevant facts—not what you think is true; rather, what can be determined through reliable sources ( reliable being the operative word). Ask yourself if the people/group providing the information are credible. If a person says they heard, saw, or know something to be “true,” gauge their honesty, intention, and memory . If a source presents data, question how it was aggregated. Beware of belief perseverance , that is clinging to a belief despite discovering new information that soundly contradicts it. Be prepared to seek out more information and verify assumptions.
• Acknowledge your biases. We all have them. Consider what you’re vulnerable to that could influence or cloud your thinking. As you do, check in with yourself about what’s bubbling beneath the surface. Perhaps it’s an emotion, sensation, or thought, or an inclination, assumption, opinion, or trend (e.g., Tik-Tok). Bring them all to the foreground and get curious about what messages they’re sending. As you deliberate, keep an eye on any voices that get in the way.
• Take stock of your values . Sometimes the values we actually have look different from the ones we think we do. When considering your values, ask yourself, “What do I stand up for and stand against?” “What would I never do?” “What do I dream about doing?” “What would I hate myself for doing or not doing?” “What (or who) can’t I live without?” “What would I never sell or give away?” “What most stimulates my empathy and brings out my compassion?” “What am I outraged by?” “Who do I look up to and why?” “What are one or two values I want to pass on to my children or someone else in my life?” “What would be something worth making huge sacrifices for in order to preserve?” The point here is to get a real sense of what matters most to you—what takes priority and precedence in your life—so that you can then factor them into your decision.
• Explore options. Determine what you can do to address the issue at hand and accomplish your goals. Come up with at least three ideas. Any less and you’re not thinking hard enough. Having said this, don’t go off on flights of fancy. Keep the options realistic in both quantity and substance. Eliminate any that are wants and wish fulfillment gone amuck.
• Consider the consequences of each action. Look at each option next to your stated core values. Note which ones align with these values and which ones don’t. Eliminate all that violate them. Next, consider what you will gain and lose with each option, then consider the stakeholders—that is, who will be affected by these options and how they will be affected. Finally, determine what if any sacrifices will have to be made—either by your or someone else. Similarly, determine who, if anyone, will be hurt or diminished because of pursuing each option.
• Make your decision and commit to taking action. Choose the option that you deem is “right,” both in feeling and thought, and the one you believe you can live with going forward—even if that requires courage. If you are still struggling to determine the “right” decision, consider talking to a professional or to someone you trust—specifically, someone whose character and judgment you respect. Also, ask yourself, “How would I feel if this decision was made public?” or “How would I feel if I heard that someone else made the same decision?” Lastly, check the final decision against your gut—that is, the inner tug working for your highest good and happiness .
• Check in over time, if appropriate. Down the road, ask yourself, “Did the decision I made have the results I intended?” And “Did it cause any unintended or adverse consequences?” If so, consider reevaluating the situation and readjusting your strategy.

Making the “right” decision isn’t always easy; in fact, it's often quite hard, especially in the face of competing or conflicting options. Fear , apprehension, and pressure can weigh heavy upon us, in no small part because regret is one of the most difficult life experiences to process.

When making a meaningful life decision, ultimately, what is most important is to be honest with yourself at each stage of the process. It’s the healthiest way to strike the “right” balance between the head and the heart.

Michele DeMarco, Ph.D., Rev , is a professionally trained therapist, clinical ethicist, writer, and researcher, specializing in moral injury and resilience.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Online Therapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Self Tests NEW
• Therapy Center
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

It’s increasingly common for someone to be diagnosed with a condition such as ADHD or autism as an adult. A diagnosis often brings relief, but it can also come with as many questions as answers.

• Emotional Intelligence
• Gaslighting
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

Home / Essay Samples / Business / Decision Making / Making Informed Choices: the Importance of Decision Making

Making Informed Choices: the Importance of Decision Making

• Category: Life , Business , Education
• Topic: Decision , Decision Making , Personal Statement

Pages: 1 (645 words)

• Downloads: -->

--> ⚠️ Remember: This essay was written and uploaded by an--> click here.

Found a great essay sample but want a unique one?

are ready to help you with your essay

You won’t be charged yet!

Illiteracy Essays

Critical Thinking Essays

Reading Essays

Online Classes Essays

Coaching Essays

Related Essays

We are glad that you like it, but you cannot copy from our website. Just insert your email and this sample will be sent to you.

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service  and  Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Your essay sample has been sent.

In fact, there is a way to get an original essay! Turn to our writers and order a plagiarism-free paper.

samplius.com uses cookies to offer you the best service possible.By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .--> -->