What decisions do you have to make today?
Options offer us the illusion of freedom. If I can keep my options open, then I can come to the best choice. Barry Schwartz says this in The Paradox of Choice:
Unfortunately, the proliferation of choice in our lives robs us of the opportunity to decide for ourselves just how important any given decision is.
Schwartz spends the entire book sharing of the ways unlimited options lead us away from goals, and to deliberation rather than actions. Not all decisions we make carry the same weight or value. It requires wisdom to narrow our focus.
Specific areas of our lives invite us to make pre-decisions. A pre-decision is a choice that you can make before the question is asked. For example, Steve Jobs wore the same outfit every day (Click here to read more). By doing that it freed him up to make other decisions. We see other leaders doing that for minute tasks such as meals and traveling.
I’m not arguing that you wear the same outfit each day, but each of us encounters decisions that if we took time to pre-decide it could offer clarity to us personally and the people around us:
You can decide who takes the lead when you’re away from the office.
You can decide what meal to bring when you sign up for a meal train.
You can decide on how you support a person in your small group when they face a crisis.
You can decide the rhythm of spending time with your spouse or kids.
If we took time to reflect on the decisions we need to make, I wonder how many of them we could pre-decide. When you pre-decide, you offer clarity to the people around you when communicate that decision. You no longer have to start from scratch. It saves you time from brainstorming or starting from scratch.
What decisions in your life can you pre-decide? Think about the freedom that can offer you and to those around you. Write a list of pre-decisions and share them with the people close to you.
Photo by Elena Koycheva