Austin Counseling--Decisionmaking

When interviewing for my first counseling job, I was asked what my worst flaw was. I spontaneously answered, "I'm not very decisive." Surprisingly, I got the job and my first goal when starting the job was to learn how to make faster, more efficiently decision and make the best decision given the situation.

The follow article reflects the process I learned about decisionmaking.

Good decisions are made "with the head and the heart". We actually make better decisions when we use our conscious mind together with our unconscious mind. Researchers in Denmark studied decisions made by people when they were allowed to think about their choices and compared this to decisions made when they were distracted and not allowed to consciously think about their problems. People made better decisions when they had been distracted - when the decision was heavily influenced by their unconscious mind.
We seem to be better able to hold multiple options in our unconscious mind and process them "in the background." Our consious mind can only attend to one or two things at a time.

Follow these steps if you are faced with a major decision in your life.
1. Before you start narrowing down options be sure you have considered all of them. It often helps to spend some time brainstorming. Are there options you haven't considered? What else might you do? Start with a blank piece of paper and write down everything you can think of related to your decision. Focus on generating possibilities without being critical.

2. After generating different options, put the piece of paper away and go do something else. Watch a movie; read a book; or literally sleep on it - go to sleep for the night.

3. Take a fresh look at the options that you generated. Do a few of them jump out at you as especially good choices? Underline them. Do others seem especially bad? Cross them out. Work toward coming up with two or three especially promising options.

4. Divide a piece of paper into two columns - one titled "advantages" and the other titled "disadvantages." Draw a line (or two) across the page dividing it into two (or three) equal sized rows. Label these for the choices you are considering.
Write down all of the advantages and disadvantages you can think of for each of the two or three choices you are considering. There will be some overlap - the advantages of one option may also be disadvantages of a different option. There will also be some unique entries in each section. It may become clear that one of your choices is better than another at the end of this procedure. Don't skip the next step, though.

5. Put the piece of paper away and don't look at it for 24 hours. You may want to take it out again the next day, or you may wake up having made your decision. If you do look at the paper again, look at it from a distance - from across the room. Do any of the blocks stand-out?
If you still can't decide, then bring a trusted friend in on the process. Another person's input can help you see things from a different point-of-view.

Source: Dijksterhuis, A. and Nordgren, L. "A Theory of Unconscious Thought". Perspectives on Psychological Science, June 2006.