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Success Advice

7 Simple but Effective Ways to Make Better Decisions

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success is about options - decision making
Joel Brown

Tony Robbins wrote in his book awaken the giant within, “I believe that in your moments of decision your destiny is shaped.” We all know how important decision making is in all aspects of life. Whether it was a big decision or small one we make every single day. However, it can be really hard for us to consistently make the “right” ones.

In order to fix that, you might want to read books on decision making (“The Decision Book” is my favourite), but that can make you overwhelmed and end up taking a huge amount of your precious time because there are so many books on the subject.

To help you with that, I gathered for you a few of the best decision making tips I could possibly find. Ones that  are proven to work effectively and that you can start implementing right away.

Here are 7 effective ways to make better decisions:

1 Make decisions in the light of your values

When you have a predefined set of values, the decision making process will become much easier as you’ll be first considering which options reflect your values and which don’t. Therefore you’ll be cutting out a significant amount of the options available to you. Obviously, to be able to do that, you have to know what your values are. So you might want to spend some time on figuring out your values.

“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.” – Albert Einstein

2. Seek expert advice

By “expert” I don’t mean a person you know, who has an opinion about everything but no real knowledge in pretty much anything. Taking advice from that kind of person can be quite dangerous and can lead you to making serious mistakes in life. The very first rule of asking advice is to choose the right person to ask.

Someone whom you consider wise and doing pretty well in the area you would like to get help in. For example, you don’t want to take financial advice from a broke person, nor a health advice from someone overweight. You don’t have to get direct advice from someone – although that’s preferred, you can just do a bit of research in books, or simply online.

3. Make important decisions in the morning

According to professor Baba Shiv from Stanford Graduate School of business, the best time to make a decision during the day is early in the morning. This is due to the calming chemical called Serotonin, which is at its highest level early in the morning and declines from that gradually during the day. That’s why in the afternoon, you’re more likely to make the decision out of fear. You can try to keep your Serotonin level high throughout the day by getting good quality deep sleep at night, having a good breakfast rich with protein like egg whites, and exercising regularly. All the previous practices were proven effective in increasing as well as maintaining a healthy level of serotonin during a greater portion of the day.

4. Ask “what if” a lot

I learned this technique from the information scientist Nidhi Kalra. To make sure that we are making the right decision we often try to predict the future by saying this is what will probably happen so I better choose this option. She believes that’s not necessary. Instead, we must ask “what if?” a lot. By doing so, we consider all possible future occurrences and we end up stumbling upon options that can fit with them all. Therefore making better decisions.

5. Only consider reasons created by you

Some like to call it following your heart or listening to your intuition, but I like to call it considering your own reasons just like the modern philosopher Ruth Chang does. She said in her TED talk that what makes a decision hard for us is not that we’re ignorant or stupid, instead it’s because of the existence of multiple alternatives. Some are good in some ways while others are good in other ways.

She says that there is no specific “right option” to choose in such cases. And to make a good decision (one that will make us happy) you simply must solely consider reasons that you create for yourself, as opposed to ones given to you by others.

6. Beware of cognitive biases

Biases can be pretty dangerous: they cloud our judgement, make us adopt wrong beliefs in life, and may mislead us to make some very bad choices. The two biases that affect your decision making process the most are the self serving bias and the confirmation bias. The self serving bias is the tendency to credit all good things that happen to us to our own efforts, and every bad thing happening to us to the outside world.

This helps keeping our self esteem up, however too much of it prevents us from learning from our past failures. Therefore repeating the same mistake over and over again. The confirmation bias is the tendency to only look for and consider evidence and information that confirms our beliefs, instead of exploring both sides of the situation. Just consciously paying attention to these biases can help you massively improve your ability to make good decisions.

“A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.” – Plato

7. Learn from your past decisions

Reflect upon all the decisions you’ve made before. Look at the ones that went well, and try to figure out the process you followed back then and distill from it the key ingredients that worked for you and just use them again in the future. Bad decisions you’ve previously made are enormously helpful too. So make sure you draw a powerful lesson from each one of them and make good use of it in the future.

What tips would you give to help make better decisions? Please leave your thoughts below!

Mariem El Majdoubi is a young Moroccan writer. She is a high school student who likes reading and enjoys writing short stories. She's also all about helping people achieve success by making them focus on personal development through her various articles. You can follow her blog: http://optimizedsuccess.weebly.com/ or connect with her on Facebook: facebook.com/satyoptimized.

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Success Advice

How to Alter Your Business Approach With Technological Advancements

Keeping up with technological trends has become a challenge for almost every business owner.

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altering business approach
Image Credit: Midjourney

Technology’s evolution has impacted everything, and business is no exception. Keeping up with technological trends has become a challenge for almost every business owner. Entrepreneurs unable to do so are being wiped out of the market.

There is no doubt that AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning) have taken over the business world. These technological advancements are impacting decision-making, success percentages, and other entrepreneurial aspects.

Adapting to these developments is integral to business success. Let’s explore how you can accomplish these milestones.

Embed the strength of AI and ML.

AI has modified business operations in major ways. For instance, companies have employed bots for customer support. These bots go through an effective learning process via Machine Learning before being able to answer like humans.  

Bots can also perform detailed data analytics and make business moves with high success percentages.

ML is used more for the analysis of data chunks and generating successful predictions. This simply means that business owners do not have to worry about large-scale financial losses. 

In terms of deployment and usage, a reputed company like Netflix employs machine learning for decision-making.

Blockchain is increasing the count of business opportunities

Tampering of financial transactions is quite common and causes severe monetary damage to customers. With the rise of digital payments, this risk has increased. 

Blockchain is used to elevate your experience for monetary transfers. It combats penetrating events to extract confidential customer information. 

Most business sectors are using block chain but finance and supply chain management sections have a higher count. These two corporate sections have several monetary deposits and withdrawals taking place. 

In terms of percentage, approximately 72% and 5% of finance and supply chain firms have implemented block chain successfully.

Dedicate Yourself to Continuous Learning and Individual Development

You invest in learning some of the very important skills, including digital marketing, financial management, and how to gain customers as an entrepreneur.

You need to set up your knowledge base about doing business on Coursera and Udemy with the basics that are necessary for the business, building further by networking with experts through webinars.

Besides, Agile methodology will introduce elasticity to your company: this review and feedback system with further correction regularly will allow for enhancing efficiency and promptly reacting to the market.

Developing key skills to achieve goals

Running a business successfully is not only about having niche/domain knowledge. Business owners need to have communication / soft skills as well in addition to niche information.

Here are some key technical/domain-related areas that business owners should have a strong grip on.

Data Storage on Cloud: These days, companies do not store their data on physical servers. Therefore business owners should know how data is stored/edited/removed/updated via AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and other platforms.

Data Analysis/Interpretation Qualities: These days, data is as precious as gold. Business owners with data analysis abilities make correct predictions. As a result, their ventures grow in volume.

Development/Coding Knowledge

Programming knowledge gives business owners an edge whether the application is developed in-house or outsourced. It assists in getting updates deployed and handling application underperformance without getting professional support every time.

Hacking proof framework

There is no benefit of having an advanced automated system if can be penetrated. Successful business owners have above-average knowledge of cyber security and hacking attempts. They are able to choose top-notch anti-hacking software without much of an ambiguity.

Communication Abilities/Soft Skills

Here are some key communication qualities that business owners should have:

Communication/Conversation: Business owners should use to-the-point sentences in both written and oral communication.

Issue Resolution Abilities: Business owners should be able to drill down to problems and solve them. This is done successfully only if an entrepreneur has in-depth business domain knowledge.

Agile Implementations

It is mandatory for business owners to have knowledge of iterative/agile models. With such a competitive environment, it is impossible for business owners to succeed without adopting an agile framework.

Create a productive well-crafted Business Strategy

A productive business venture starts with a clear vision. The first factor making a business successful is the idea behind it. It helps with endless growth and combating competition successfully. Katherine Philips once mentioned that business goals are inevitable if goals are set concretely.

  • Goals should be based on smart achievements instead of complexity. Focus on the value that each one of them adds. 
  • Business objectives should not be vague. Key indicators should be constructed to measure the success/failure of each milestone.
  • Be realistic when setting goals. Do not aim at impossible milestones since they can be demotivating.
  • Milestones/goals need to be time-bound. Set a completion deadline for each one of them. 
  • Business goals should not be alien. Owners can think out of the box but not be obsolete / unrelated.

Create a productive well-crafted Business Strategy

Business owners cannot succeed without having a network. Some tips help in this case. Attend conferences and professional gatherings to connect with other entrepreneurs.
Here are some other related points business owners should pay attention to.

  • Attend meetings and conferences to stay updated with trends and meet business owners who already have well-set ventures. This helps in enhancing the learning curve of new / growing entrepreneurs.
  • Being a part of business communities/groups is very productive. When one shares opinions and discusses decision-making tactics, it helps in preventing errors and enhancing success rate.
  • Even the most experienced business owners have mentors as learning never stops. Take part in mentorship programs so there is an assurance that you are following the correct roadmap.

Conclusion

There is absolutely no doubt that business dimensions have evolved with technological advancements. Successful entrepreneurs have grabbed these changes in due course of time and continue to evolve. On the other hand, people following old paths and conventional steps fade out of competition. In a nutshell, keep an eye on the processes and practices you follow as these factors decide success rate.

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Success Advice

Understanding the Power of Yes and No: How to Create Boundaries For Success

These words have a significant impact on how our success unfolds

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Creating legal boundaries
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The two smallest yet most powerful words in life, “Yes” and “No,” have a big impact on our growth on both personal and professional levels. In addition to affecting the choices we make every day, these words have a significant impact on how our success unfolds. (more…)

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Motivation

From Couch Potato to Go-Getter: A Step-by-Step Motivation Plan for Everyone

By understanding what motivates you, you can turn your dreams into reality

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How to be motivated
Image Credit: Midjourney

Are you tired of feeling like a couch potato? Do you want to transform your life and become a go-getter? You’re not alone! Many people struggle with motivation, but the good news is that change is possible. (more…)

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Success Advice

10 Micro Financial Habits for More Wealth and Peace of Mind

The World Economic Forum still reports that half of U.S. adults lack financial literacy

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micro financial habits
Image Credit: Midjourney

You’ve heard about developing financial habits, but what about micro-financial habits? Micro habits are the tiny things you can do every day with minimal effort that, together, transform your future. (more…)

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