How to Make Up Your Mind…Faster

/ Doc Ayomide

We humans, we love our fences, don’t we?  When we’re not shouting at each other across them, we’re sitting right on them.

I saw plenty of that in the last few months. In the political contest that was all the Nigerian rage, many of us stood in the middle, unable to make up our minds. We had our reasons of course, but still…

Just what is the attraction of fences?

Is it so much the difficulty of the decision (as many would say) or the fear of ending up wrong? (After all, you can’t go wrong betting on a fence, can you? Yeah, you can’t go right either, though, but who’s to know? And anyway, you can always say, “I always knew that would happen!”)

What if it really is indecision?

What if there’s no fear of being wrong, just the challenge of deciding one way or another? So many things to consider. Fair enough. Except that the situations real life throws at you tend to demand decisions (something to do with that tyrant, time); and that’s when really great leaders stand out from the pack. I’ve long wondered how they did it. Here’s the difference as I see it (or more probably picked it up from God-knows-where): while the rest of us squabble over various issues, these guys drill the situation down to the essentials.

As it turns out, things tend to go much simpler from there.

So when you’re stuck for what way to take, before you start looking for more information, ask the really important question:

“What are the big questions here?”

Can you give examples of how this has this worked for you before?

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9 thoughts on “How to Make Up Your Mind…Faster”

  1. Deep stuff u have here, i enjoyed reading it! An experience dat comes to mind was a time i had to choose between 3 job offers dat had their own unique perks.The big question that helped with my decision was ‘ which wld have d greatest value for me in terms of exposure to skill building and character development.’
    I would say that in drilling d situation down to d essentials what each individual holds as ‘values’ help form their ‘big questions’.

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  2. Nice write up:) made a lot of sense and I believe I fall in the category of the indecisive ones but something you failed to put into consideration the gravity of consequence of the decision you are about to make. Like Nneka mentioned abt her job decision, that was kinda straight forward but when it comes to decisions like choosing a spouse, getting divorced,etc the criteria for these examples are kinda complicated and subjective. But coming back to the election I believe I fall into the category of the indecisive one because I didn’t really support anyone(I was totally against buhari:) because there were no credible candidates as far as I was concerned(besides some that really had no experience and no hope of even making a dent in the polls eg Utomi). I guess to make a decision would be a lot easier if u know exactly what you want or aleast what you can “manage”. Nice write up! Keep it up 🙂

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    • Thanks a lot, Ikenna: I do intend to keep it up. 🙂

      About decisions with potentially great consequences, it’s kind of implied, isn’t it? The gravity of the decision is exactly why we’d want to take our time, I think (or at least, why it would bother us that time was passing). At any rate, I think we can both agree that the bigger the decision, the more we need to ensure our choices align with our deep values (which is what I guess you mean by decisions being easier “if you know exactly what you want”). And the more we need to be willing to risk being wrong. Thanks again!

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  3. Great job, A! Especially on the response & follow-up comments. Learnt a lot from Nneka & Ikenna. May God grant us Grace, to always decide with tomorrow in mind. Cheers, all!!

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