Over the past few years, I’ve developed a decision making process that helped me navigate through the toughest and biggest decisions of my life so far, and it has never failed me as it runs on objectivity. Give it a try if you’re stuck with a decision. Here it goes:

If you’re unsure of a decision, don’t ask people for advice right away. Grab a piece of paper, write down the problem, mention the options, and run a quick SWOT analysis on each (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) be very objective. Make it into a table like this one:

That will give you a lot of objective clarity about your situation. On the top of the paper, write your bias. You’re naturally biased towards one of the options, & you must admit it. “I feel biased towards option X”. You can now ask people what they think. Your objective should be for them to CHALLENGE your decision/hypotheses so they bring in more clarity & new angles that you may have not considered/seen

Use that input to update your SWOT analysis, and revise it again. Remember to keep an open mind and beware of leaning to your bias without reason and objectivity. Now it’s your time to make a decision.

You have to go through each option separately: are you fine living with the weaknesses? Are you willing to risk the threats? Are you confident about the strengths? Are the opportunities realistic?

A simple hack that helps is to assess an option with the best vs worst case scenarios. a) what’s the best case scenario? b) what’s the worst case scenario? c) is the best case scenario worth risking the worst case scenario for? If yes, do it.

Example: starting a business. a) best case: become financially free & successful. b) worst case: go bankrupt and start over again. c) is the best worth risking the worst? (up to you to decide)

Example 2: street racing. a) best case: adrenaline rush for 1 minute. b) worst case: die or get severely injured, hurt others in the process. c) is the best worth risking the worst? (up to you to decide)