Get out of bed or snooze? Spend time thinking of a way to earn money or ignore and chill, again? Go hang out with your friends or exercise then hang? If you were choosing for a friend, whose best interests were in your heart, how would you decide for them? Is this different if you were choosing for yourself? Surely we make the best decisions for ourselves. Unfortunately not.
We let ourselves away with way more than we would another person. You’re more likely to choose the best option for other people because you don’t have to do the hard work. Knowing what to do is the easy part, doing it is the hard part. I know I shouldn’t play games for hours on end but does that stop me?
Lower your expectations for others and raise your expectations for yourself. This all forms part of the larger area of decision making. Why we make certain decisions and how we can make better decisions. Our lives can only improve through making better decisions. Do what you’ve always done, get what you’ve always got right? The problem is that the reasons why we make decisions is much more complex than just being more disciplined. We have years of habits, thought patterns and cognitive biases to contend with, and that’s barely scratching the surface.
Simple beginnings
One way to start making better basic decisions is by looking at yourself, from outside of yourself. As if you were another person. See yourself reaching for that chocolate? How would you want your friend to respond if they saw you, and knew you weren’t eating chocolate? Are you the sort of friend to say “Ahh it’s ok, you deserve it!” or hold them accountable to their goals? Start with this and be aware of what decisions you are making on a regular basis.
So are you going to hit snooze?
Want to know more?
The following books go into much greater detail about how we think and why. Thinking Fast and Slow, Blink, Thinking In Bets, Algorithms To Live By