40 | How to Make Better Decisions and Become More Effective Every Single Day

Calls with Chris Smith

“If you want to feel good, brainstorm about it. If you want to appear good, test it. But if you want to know if you’re any good, ship it.” — Jason Fried

I love this quote. It talks about one of the things that we’re so passionate about here at Curaytor, which is this idea of actually executing on our ideas.

In order to become great at execution, you have to become great at decision-making.

Decision-making is one of those skills that pay dividends if you can develop it. Like communication, writing, self-improvement — it’s one of those skills that if you get better at it, it impacts every aspect of your business and life.

I’m going to cover three skills — or tactics — that can help you become a better decision-maker.

‘Do You Even Have to Make a Decision on it?’

The energy and the effort that’s involved and required to make a decision can be absolutely exhausting.

There’s a wonderful book we have here at Curaytor’s Boston office called, The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership, by Steven B. Sample and it talks about this concept of, ‘Is this a hill you’re willing to die on?’ Is it that important to you or your organization that you’re willing to die on that hill? This is a really helpful exercise in decision-making because, here at Curaytor, we have three very stubborn, opinionated founders between Chris, myself, and Andrew. The reason there’s no drama or power struggle in our nearly five-year-old company is that we’ve all — in our own minds — decided the hill that we’re willing to die on.

So one of the things that we have to think about to become better at decision-making is being OK with saying, “I don’t have to make a decision on this because this is not a hill I’m willing to die on.”

‘Can You Reduce the Number of Decisions You Make Every Single Day?’

There’s a wonderful TED Talk done by Barry Schwartz where he talks about the idea of having too many options, “The Paradox of Choice”. If you ask consumers if they want more or fewer choices, they’re always going to say, “More.” But, in fact, more choices lead to more stress, anxiety, and suffering.

So, one of the ways to become better at decision-making is to dramatically reduce the number of choices you have to make every single day. I can’t emphasize this enough. This is one thing that I think is so important to becoming a better decision-maker.

Chris does this thing every year where he asks the people he communicates with the most, “What should I be working on in 2018?” And he tries to boil it down to a few core items of how he should best use his time. Every time it comes down to one or two things. This allows him to do his best work going forward.

So, we want to think about, “How do we reduce the number of decisions we make every single day?”

Identify What’s Changed in the Last Six Months, the Last Year, and the Last Few Years, That Could Affect the Decision You’re Going to Make.

When we think about making decisions we have to think about the timing of those decisions, because that matters. Often times, what you’ll find, is that your ability to identify what’s changed since the last time you had to make this decision can help you dramatically improve the likelihood of your making the right decisions.

One of the things I always challenge our team to think about is to identify the blind spots — What are the assumptions we’re making that, potentially, are simply not true? These assumptions, often times — the things where we’re so convinced, unequivocally, that we’re right — can lead us to make the wrong decisions, at the wrong times.

At Curaytor, we’re all about helping our team develop skills that actually have an impact on their daily lives. What I want you guys to be thinking about now, and going forward in 2018, is your ability to become effective, productive, and satisfied in your job. It all comes down to developing the skills like decision-making that allow you to do the job and be confident while doing it.