A Simple Decision Making Process

Some decisions are a simple matter. Others such as moving, taking a new job, or buying something, selling something, replacing something, etc…may not appear so easy to make initially. Often these decisions involve number of options, involve other people involving a number of choices, and can impact other areas of your life. If you are facing a major life-changing decision, you can use the pros and con decision process to identify and develop options for decision-making and problem-solving.

1. On a sheet of paper, write the option or decision being considered, and then beneath it create two columns one with the heading 'pro's' and the other with 'con's'.
2. Then write down as many effects, implications and factors of the particular option that you can think of, placing each in the relevant column.
3. You may find it helpful scoring each factor, by giving it a score out of three or five points (eg., 5 being extremely significant, and 1 being of minor importance).
4. When you have listed all the points you can think of for the decision concerned compare the number or total score of the results/effects/factors between the two columns.
5. This may provide an idea and indication as to the overall attractiveness and benefit of the option concerned. If you have scored each item you will actually be able to arrive at a total score, being the difference between the pro's and con's column totals. The bigger the difference between the total pro's and total con's then the more attractive the option is.
6. If you have a number of decisions and have complete a pro's and con's sheet for each decision to be arrived at, compare the attractiveness – the score difference between the pro's and con's - for each decision. The biggest positive difference between pro's and con's is the most attractive option.
   

If you don't like the answer that this decision-making process provides you, it means you haven't included all the factors - especially the emotional ones - or you haven't scored the factors consistently. If that’s the case you may want to review process and take into account any new factors.

You may find that writing things down in this way will help you to see things more clearly, becoming more objective and detached, which will help you to make a clearer decision.