Is It Taking You Too Long To Make Decisions?
How long does it take for you to make decisions in your business? If you’re like many people, you sit there and hem and haw and worry over even the most trivial of decisions. It’s holding you back big time– but it doesn’t have to anymore. We’ll get to the solution in a minute. For now, let’s talk about all the ways its holding you back.
How long would it take you to make a decision like the following:
“What should my domain name be?”
“What should I work on next?”
“How can I find my next client?”
“How can I make this angry customer happy again?”
“How can I make extra income this week?”
The fact that it takes you too long to make decisions is also causing you to procrastinate. You put off making important decisions and even relatively unimportant decisions. It scares you that you’ll make the wrong move. You start to dread the worse and think, “what if?”
This fear of decision making, whether its in your conscious or sub-conscious, dashes your creativity. If you’re not moving forward, you’re not creating. If you’re stuck in the past or stuck on the same old problems, you can’t use your creative juices on things that would really help to move your business forward.
How can your business thrive when you so often have this feeling of uncertainty? Maybe you’ve been aware of this feeling of uncertainty or maybe you’re just now realizing that your decision making skills need some work.
Why 60 Seconds Is Key
60 seconds is a key amount of time to make certain decisions. We aren’t talking about life or death decisions here! We’re talking about decisions that hold a certain level of importance. These are decisions that are important and do change the course of your business, but in the long run won’t have incredibly dramatic effects (in most cases… in other cases, they might and that’s okay!).
Most decisions actually aren’t crucial. The most crucial thing about them is that you go ahead and make them and move forward with some kind of action. If you sit there doing nothing, or doing nothing but trying to make the decision, or procrastinating trying to make a decision, you’re getting nowhere.
Your brain also likes boundaries. Believe it or not, by imposing the 60 second limit on your brain, you’ll generally make better decisions than you did before. You’re going to gather the facts and make fantastic decisions that will serve your business well. Essentially, you’re going to force your brain to make great decisions.
Give Yourself The Facts
Of course, it wouldn’t be smart business to go around blindly making decisions. You need to give yourself the facts. But you need to do so smartly. You need to calmly gather the facts and keep them in front of you. Keep the emotions out of it. Don’t use this as an excuse to procrastinate further. Just give yourself the facts like an efficient judge would want in a case.
Set The Timer
Now, it’s time to make your decision. You can literally set a timer for 60 seconds if you need to. While the timer’s going, examine the facts that are in front of you. Again, keep the emotions and hemming and hawing out of it. DO allow your gut instincts into it. Your instincts will often steer you in the right direction.
At the end of 60 seconds, make your decision. It really is that easy. No backtracking… just go with it.
Make Better Decisions
You’ll notice that your decisions start to get better and really benefit your business. You’ll start to procrastinate less and enjoy your business more. As you get faster at making better decisions, they’ll become less of a burden. You’ll make great decisions with ease and confidence, leading to greater business success.
You can apply this decision making process to your life as well. In fact that would be a great way to develop this habit if you’re at all hesitant about making important business decisions this quickly.
For example when you’re deciding what restaurant to go to, Italian or Chinese, why should it take longer than 60 seconds, and if it does, what did you gain?
Which color towel should you get, yellow or blue?
Should I go to this grocery store or the other one?
Do I need to take $100 out of the ATM or will $50 be enough?
During the course of a typical day, you (sometimes unknowingly) make a dozen or more decisions, often pondering and taking way too much time on each. The next time you catch yourself wondering over something like which DVD to rent, just pick one in 60 seconds or less, and get on with your life.
The more you do these quick decisions, the more your subconscious will accept that’s the way it works, and your more major decisions will become easier as well.
But obviously, not all decisions are equal, so don’t blame me if you don’t think a bit longer over which house to purchase or person to marry. 
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