Decision making skills?

Can you recommend any decision making resources?

Both my husband and I are crap at making decisions. I googled for resources and got this wonderful page with 40 decision making tools:

Decision Making Techniques and Skills from MindTools.com

I'm seriously fazed by the idea of having to sort through them and choose one.

So, any recommendations? I have difficulty choosing goals.

What a pickle! Well, of course you know there are many options but I'll direct you to the one that has helped me the most:

How to become more decisive immediately | Work/Life Pointers

Hope this helps my friend. I am also struggling with indecisiveness. It is stemming from my fear of regret and past mistakes that I can never take back. But a life lived with no regrets, is a life better not lived I heard. Good luck Hermit =D

For complex decisions its best to let your emotions rather than logic take over. Things like buying a house or car...do you love it or not? If not move on.

I could never love a house or a car. A car I will buy based on Lemon-Aid books, a house based on the market. These are purely rational things I can cope with. In fact, I have to get a new vehicle soon - that is, a used one, but new to me.

I don't have enough money to buy cars or houses based on whim, anyway. If you are that wealthy, then hats off to you.

Oh trust me my car had a cost benefit analysis along with safety considerations average lifespan but I bought it because its pretty and fast....Volvo S60. But the concession was 6 years old with 100,000 miles, it should make double that. Cost me 10,000 bought out of state to save more money. But I love it so it makes me happy.

Condo...2nd one I saw purchased because of size and because it had a gas stove and large balcony also it was an estate sale in a low tax area. What can I say I must fall in love easily. Although I was searching online for two months before finding "the one". Call it a gut feeling but it works for me and studies suggest that this behavior actually works better than logic for complex decisions.

But if it doesn't work for you I respect that.

I respect your different choices, too.

I am really struggling with finding an occupation that suits me - something to do in life that is both suitable and realistic. I have a tab in my browser "career search 2009" and I was searching since before I left my previous career ~year 2000. I've done something else since then, but it ceased to be suitable. I've struggled with this all my life.

Do you have a smart phone...there is an app called career test that can give you sort of an overview of what your interests are. Also there is a book called what color is your parachute. Once you take the test there are suggested careers. Also have you followed up on any choices seen admissions counselors or tried to
shadow someone? Good luck with the hunt.

I've done much of parachute a couple of times. I've interviewed people, done career programs online and at school. Not sure what you mean about adm counsellors.

A big part of the problem is not liking much of what goes on in the world, or I can't be comfortable with the way it is done. I'm studying an environmental science right now, 2nd degree. Doing well, interested in some things. Not sure where it leads for me. Dreams of what I might do are hard to form. I seem to have no imagination in this area. Everything lands with a dull thud in my mind. I look at the jobs that are out there and they seem to lead nowhere for me.

never knew that decission making tools even existed online!

thanks... i'm absolutely terrible when it comes to this- may as well bang my head against a wall

I'm not sure what I mean about Admissions counselors my friend wants me to meet with one about going to art school so I just threw that in there, but basically I think they just sell what their school can do for you, I mean universities are a big business like any other selling a product. But if you're already in school I'm not sure it would help.

There's a new book out, your library may have it, Decisive, How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work, by Chip Heath. I love he and his brother's books, very readable and informative.

Agreed.

I just have a hard time making decisions and then not wishing I'd done something else - no matter how good it turns out. Also, waffling. Hard time with that as well.

an admissions councillor will talk through your choices/options and help you decide if they are going to be the right ones for you based on your passions/interests, drive and past ability/experiences.

hi, We must be twins, I feel much the same way.

Welcome to PC. Are you also middle-aged like me? I've had this problem more or less forever, since I was a kid/teenager.

You might want to check out this online book I have gotten good help with over the years for that situation:

Welcome to the home of Barbara Sher's WISHCRAFT!

Yes, I was working with that from a previous time you posted it, actually.

I got to end of chapter 3 and beginning of chapter 4, goal search, and I got stuck at the same place as always. But thanks for posting it.

My further thoughts below, not particularly directed at you, just what comes at the moment.

You know, I took a narcissism test. Despite agreeing that "The world would be a better place if I were in charge," I scored well below average non-narcissists for narcissism. I would just like to change the whole world, and that's way beyond not realistic. And some incremental change on some tiny subset - I'm sorry, every little bit does not make a difference if the overall trajectory is still crashing into a mountain. So you crash into this rockface or that one. Oh, well, you tried. Just doesn't excite me in the least. I don't see any significant way to make a difference that I care about.

No one can change the world. The world is what it is based on the people in it; people dominate the world today.

Ah. "I don't see any significant way to make a difference that I care about." In a sense, your world is what you make of it. What "my" world looks like is not what "your" world looks like because our perceptions are different. Perhaps if you worked on changing you and how you view the world, that might shift the overall trajectory in your world so you don't crash into a mountain?

For me, part of my world is the future and if I let that be too much a part of my world (we can't know the future, it doesn't exist, there's only "now"), what I imagine is going to happen or it is going to be like (Eeek! All the icebergs are melting, the seas are rising, we're all gonna drown!) then I get too focused on that image and not on what is actually in front of me, now, glacier ice harvesting: Glacier Ice Harvesting in Alaska what a cool idea! (sorry for the pun :-)

I'm not crashing into a mountain. I am fine. The natural world is being dismantled, and I feel powerless to stop it in any significant way because humans are like a parasite that is destroying the host. It's that trajectory that concerns me.

Never mind the future, the past and present are terrible and are the blueprint for the future.

We're all gonna drown? I wish.

I see nothing cool about glacier ice harvesting. It's just more consumption. Water is a prime resource and its extraction drives much destruction.

Hi, i have trouble with this too, i tend to reverse decisions a lot or think it over and over and not make a decision at all.. I'm ocd too..

I think when making "big" decisions in life you should weigh the pros and cons. Write each of them down on a piece of paper and weigh your options. Sometimes when not making a decision is actually making a decision. Best wishes for you!

H3rmit ~ go to school for what you have a passion for...

I went back to college at age 39.