5 Best Frameworks for better Decision Making
Lessons from an avid reader
Jim Rohn, mentor of success coaches Tony Robbins and Darren Hardy, very well quoted that
The quality of your life depends on the quality of your questions
Our life usually gets better and more peaceful, or I can say we get calmer not by getting the right answer but by asking a set of great uncomfortable questions when we are in a dilemma, or in a sense of confusion or a state of lack of clarity.
Below are some questions I ask myself and answer them to get a clear depth and understanding of things
1. Is it under my control??
The best thing I have ever learned from Stoicism is to ask myself “Is it under my control or not”. There is this Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr which goes by the following
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference.
Every time when you are stuck with something or are in a state of dilemma ask yourself if what is happening, can you control it.
If it is something you can change?? If it is not under your control accept it, and what’s in your control if you wish to change it then change it.
Things not under your control
- What people think of you, say about you or how they behave with you is not under your control and will never be
- The weather
Things in your control
- Your actions
- Your thoughts
- Your words
- Your attitude
2. Will this matter a year from now?
Observe this, the majority of the time when we are worrying over something or pondering over something, it usually is something which will matter only for a short period of time.
In such moments, ask yourself, what am I confused about or pondering over whether will it matter a year from Now??
There might be things which will matter but 95% of the time they won’t and things which will not matter a year from now is not worth overthinking or getting sad about.
This framework will get you out of that overthinking zone.
3. Am I telling myself a story?
We are emotional beings, the world that moves around us is due to stories that are spoken, nothing will work without good stories, stories and reasoning give us purpose and meaning to do something.
But wait.. that is not all. Stories lie to us as well.
The majority of things we tell our mind are through perceptions, and perception has its limits.
We miss out on relevant information because to conserve energy our mind uses shortcuts to remember things and due to such shortcuts we miss blindspots and get biased.
This was necessary for survival when our ancestors used to live in the savannah but right now in today’s world, the stories we tell ourselves contain a lot of assumptions, and assumptions lead us to suffer.
Seneca has a very famous quote
We suffer more in imagination than in reality
And it is so true, we assume so many things that in reality it is nowhere close to what we thought earlier.
So always rely on facts and data, and not assumptions or stories.
When in doubt, leave it out
4. What is the worst that could happen?
I learned about this framework through Tim Ferris, who has a mind-blowing fear-setting exercise.
When you are confused about a situation, thinking it might go either way, ask yourself what is the worst that could happen.
“If I make this decision what is the worst that could happen and how it will alter the way I live?”
Rate it on a scale from 1 to 10 where 1 implies negligible changes in the way you live and 10 implies something permanently life-changing.
Quoting below all the things mentioned by Tim Ferris
“I realized that on a scale of 1–10, my so-called worst-case scenario might have a temporary impact of 3 or 4. I believe this is true of most people and most would-be “holy sh*t, my life is over” disasters.
On the other hand, if I realized my best-case scenario or even a probable-case scenario, it would easily have a permanent 9 or 10 positive life-changing effect.
In other words, I was risking an unlikely and temporary 3 or 4 for a probable and permanent 9 or 10, and I could easily recover my baseline workaholic prison with a bit of extra work if I wanted to.”
Below is the link to the complete article for you to check out
5. If you don’t ask for it, the answer will always be NO
I have learned this lesson from one of my mentors Mr Ankur Warikoo “If you don’t ask for it, the answer will always be NO”
Usually what people do is assume rather than ask.
They usually assume that they are eventually going to say NO only, then why even bother asking?
That is where the mindset needs a change.
If you ask for it there are chances that your request will be declined, but there are chances that they might consider and agree to your requests. The probability is the same for a NO and a YES which is 50%.
But when you don’t even bother to ask, your chances of getting a YES are 0% because you didn’t give it a chance.
Therefore, it is always a good decision to at least ask, who knows one request can literally change your life.
Thank you for patiently reading this, if you have any more frameworks in your mind, do let me know in the comment section.
