How to make better decisions (that improve your life and business)
Oct 25, 2024Your entire life is the result of 1 thing - the decisions you make.
Whether that’s the decision about what action to take right now (maybe you’re procrastinating by reading my emails haha) or the decision to follow x long-term strategy in your business.
Or anything in between.
The decisions you make quite literally shape the direction of your life - whether you progress or regress, improve or deteriorate, flourish or wither, find meaning or dive into hedonism, make a tonne of money or stay broke.
There is no way around this.
Better decisions will, inarguably, undeniably, improve your life.
So how can you improve the quality of your decisions so that you can improve your life and grow your business?
Well to answer that you first need to know what influences your decisions.
The first, and most crucial aspect, is having a goal.
A goal is you choosing something you want to achieve, it’s quite literally you setting a direction for you to move toward.
Hence, a goal allows you to filter every decision through it, through whether or not that decision will push you toward, or shove you away, from the thing that you want.
By not being clear on your goals, you’re not clear on what decisions to make as you’re not clear on what will benefit you and hence you can’t judge the efficacy of the set of options in front of you.
But if you’ve been following me for long enough, you’ll already know all this - and so hopefully you’ll have your goal set.
Which brings us to the second factor that influences your decisions.
Your mind.
A decision is simply you choosing a certain option based on what you think is right, or beneficial.
But this in itself creates problems.
If you have not mastered your mind it may lead you astray and into hedonism rather than progress.
Hence, to make better decisions you need to improve your thought processes.
There are 1000s of things you could do here - from removing limiting beliefs to using mental models to drawing out pros and cons of every decision to practising stoicism and so on and on and on.
But as an entrepreneur, one mindset, or way of thinking that will improve your thought processes above and beyond everything else is this;
You should never blindly change things.
Let me explain…
You blindly change things when you randomly make a decision, when you choose to build a new sales page, try a new outreach strategy, create a new funnel or hire a new team member - without logical reason.
LOGICAL reason.
So many people make decisions that they think are good, or right, based on emotion.
But the problem is that emotions can lead you astray. They can lie.
Think of that time you’ve been sitting on the couch and you’re home alone and you hear a creak down the hall. Your emotions fire up, cause you to create all these scenarios in your mind and inspire fear - yet, there's nothing to worry about.
Humans are amazing at deciding with emotion and then justifying with incorrect logic, painted by their emotions.
This isn’t to say you shouldn’t listen to your emotions, or that your emotions are always wrong.
But it’s to say you shouldn’t just blindly make decisions based purely on emotion in your business, your performance or your life.
Instead, use data.
Data allows you to see what reality really is. It allows you to make accurate, and just as importantly, measurable changes that will push you in the right direction.
Every decision you make and every change you make should be based on the knowledge of WHY that decision/change, and the intention to measure the impact of that decision/change.
Instead of deciding to fire your sales rep for not meeting their sales target (emotions), maybe look at your data and you might see your show up rate is terrible and your closer actually closes at 50% but doesn’t have many calls, so you can then improve your systems to increase show ups (logic, data based).
Instead of drowning yourself in 1000mg of caffeine every day to mask your tiredness and inability to focus (emotions), maybe look at your sleep schedule - timing, duration and consistency - and you’ll notice you get 6 hours sleep and don’t have a consistent sleep schedule, you can then decide to make changes around this and improve your energy and focus (logic, data based).
Data doesn’t lie. Your feelings do.
If you want to make better decisions, follow the data.
If you’re not tracking data, start. Track everything in your business and performance.
And if you want me to help you operate at your peak, master your mind and 10x your energy and focus, click here to work with me.ā€‹
— Ross.
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