This is what I do when I want to make a decision about anything major.
Of course, if it’s because I’m a little hungry and I am trying to decide between ignoring my stomach, or going out to spend $7 on some fast fix sushi, I don’t go through this lengthy endeavour. Otherwise, for career, life, and everything in between, this is the formula I’ve come up with:
- Write down all your options (status quo included, meaning ‘do nothing’)
- Go through each option in detail to flesh out the idea
- Think about the pre-requisites of each option
- List the pros and cons of each option
- Put some numbers to it — how long? how much will it cost?
- Rank each plan
- Make a decision
- Create a plan for your goal(s) based on your above framework
- Execute
- Come up with a Plan B, just in case something monkey wrenches Plan A
There’s not much else to it. These steps let you over think and analyze everything, which eventually reveals one option that floats to the top as the true winner. The above steps are how I decided to…
- quit and start my own company
- sell my blog(s)
- move to another country
- come back to my own country
- move to yet another country (country #3)
All of the above decisions have been good, considering the situation at the time and where I was in my life.
Did I lose time and money along the way? Yes, not all my decisions have been 100% awesome. Did I gain more than I lost, either in knowledge or money?
Absolutely. I’d go back and have done it all again. The worst decision you can make, is to do absolutely nothing at all and to leave things just the way they are, wondering 20 years later if you should have done something.
