Make Good Decisions
In your school, work, and personal life, you might make hundreds of decisions every day. Some choices are straightforward and quick, like selecting tuna over turkey for lunch. Others are more complex, with higher stakes. For example, should you stay in school even if your spouse isn’t supportive? Should you buy a car to get to class even though you’re already carrying heavy credit card debt? What major will you declare? The outcomes of the choices you make, along with the complexity or difficulty of such choices, can affect your motivation. And your level of motivation can ultimately influence whether you achieve the goals that have personal meaning for you.
ACTIVITY: Ask students to keep a log of their decision making for one day (to the best of their ability). What automatic decisions did they make? Did any decisions require critical thinking? The more detail they provide, the better.
FOR DISCUSSION: Walk through the decision-making process using a simple example such as “What should I have for lunch?” Explore what would happen if you skipped a step. Would you still get the same results? Next, apply the decision-making process to a much more complicated situation, guiding students through each step.
With tough choices, you need to weigh your options carefully, but you also have to make reasonable decisions that help you move forward. If you obsess about making a “perfect decision,” you can fall victim to “analysis paralysis,” which can sap your motivation and leave you feeling hopeless about selecting a course of action.
How do you make a reasonable decision even when you’re feeling overwhelmed or frightened by a choice you’re facing? Try the following steps, which have a lot in common with the steps in the Personal Success Plan.
Identify the decision to be made. Articulating the decision sets the stage for the rest of the process.
Know yourself. Identify your strengths, weaknesses, interests, and values. This self-knowledge helps you think broadly about your options.
Identify your options. With a friend, colleague, or family member, brainstorm options available to you and write them down on a sheet of paper.
Gather information about each option. Research the details of each option you’ve listed, such as what actions you’d need to take if you chose that option and who could help you take those actions.
Evaluate your options. List the pros and cons of each option. Rate each option based on how attractive it is to you and how it will affect the people who are important to you.
Select the best option. The option with the highest rating is your most reasonable choice. If you feel nervous about committing to this choice, remind yourself that you can always change your mind later if the decision doesn’t work out as well as you had hoped.
Develop and implement an action plan. List the actions you’ll take to follow through on your decision. Then take those actions.
Evaluate the outcomes of your decision. Determine whether your decision has worked out. If not, follow this eight-step process again to arrive at a new decision.
CONNECT
TO MY EXPERIENCE
Select one choice you’ve made recently — personal, academic, or professional — and reflect on the decision-making process you used. In a brief paragraph, answer these questions: What decision-making steps did you take? Which steps didn’t you take? How could the steps you didn’t take have been helpful to you?
ACTIVITY: To connect this section to the previous section on self-efficacy beliefs, invite students to identify an academic skill in which their self-efficacy is weakest. Then have them apply this decision-making process to figure out the best option for improving their self-efficacy.
Making complex, high-stakes decisions will always be challenging, but this process can help you take a systematic approach (see Table 3.2). Also, the more you practice using it, the easier it gets.
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FURTHER READING: Carlin Flora’s article “Choices: Lost in the Aisles” (Psychology Today, 2004) examines the impact of having too many choices and looks at some of the current literature regarding this topic.
| Step | Example 1 | Example 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Identify the decision to be made | I need to select a major. | My mom is sick in another country. Should I leave school to take care of her, or should I continue my studies? |
| Know yourself | I love history, art, music, and literature, but I’m not an artist or a musician. I enjoy interacting with people. I value family, so I don’t want to work sixty hours a week. I may want to work in an art museum or possibly in arts management. | I value my family and my education. I’m the oldest of three, so my mom relies on me a lot. I’m also the first in my family to go to college, which is a point of pride for my loved ones. I’m torn between these responsibilities. |
| Identify your options | I’m considering a major in art history, finance, business, or psychology. Taking various electives is also an option. | I called my brother back home and discussed options: Take a year off from school to help Mom; stay in school and my brother will care for Mom; move Mom to a medical facility near home; or hire a visiting nurse to care for Mom twice a day. |
| Gather information about each option | I’ll learn more by meeting with my academic adviser, visiting the career center library, and interviewing recent graduates who are working in museums and the entertainment industry. | I’ll research the answers to some key questions: If I take time off from school, when do I have to come back? Could I keep all my credits? How much would care in a medical facility cost? |
| Evaluate your options | The information I gathered suggests that art history and business could prepare me for jobs in the arts. But with both majors, I’ll have to study aspects of art that don’t interest me and take two accounting courses. | Taking a year off from school would make things tough for me. My brother works full-time to support our family, so it will be hard for him to care for Mom. Mom loves her home, so it would be difficult for her to move to a medical facility. Hiring a visiting nurse would let me stay in school and ensure regular care for Mom. It’s pricey, though, and two visits a day may not be enough. |
| Select the best option | I’ll major in art history but take electives in business and management. | Balancing all these factors, we’ll have a nurse visit Mom twice a day. |
| Develop and implement an action plan | I’ll declare my major and meet with my new art history academic adviser to create a course plan. | My brother lives near Mom, so he’ll interview nurse candidates. My brother and I will split the costs. We’ll both ask several of Mom’s friends to check in on her at least once a day. |
| Evaluate the outcomes of your decision | I’ve taken courses in my major for one term and I like them, but my gut tells me that declaring a business major will give me the most options after graduation. I’ll need to do more career research before I’m comfortable with my decision. | This arrangement has worked out well. Mom’s nurse and friends check in on her during the day, and my brother comes by after work whenever he can. I’m doing well in school, but I really miss Mom — I can’t wait to visit her during the next school break. |
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