Four questions you should ask before you make essential decisions

We live in an information-booming world and can easily find opportunities and access resources from different channels. But the question comes up: Should we make this decision? This article provides you with four questions you can ask yourself while considering significant changes such as investment, job change, or intent to step into marriage.

What are the benefits and costs?

We human beings tend to avoid loss compared to gain. We are attracted by the benefits (money, promotion, company, belongings) we see in the table. But we may ignore the risks or costs we must pay before gaining benefits. So, what ways can we leverage to evaluate cost/benefit? I suggest using ROI. The returns include visible and invisible (such as relationships, future business, and long-term opportunities). The investment covers money, time spent, and influence on people’s relationships. Remember that long-short-tem balance is our principle while considering cost/benefit.

What if we don’t make this decision?

Sometimes, we can take one step back to think, what if we don’t make this decision? The principle here is, will we lose anything if we don’t make this decision? Our eyeballs into good things through marketing events, social media WOM, and news, and all of these factors drive our interests in decisions such as making investments, buying new cars, a luxury trip, etc., and we start to make the ROI evaluation. But do we really need those items? We may understand that our car is still workable, but we better save the cash for an upcoming necessary expense. A luxury trip may not fulfill what we need. You can have a clear picture after considering the necessity of making the coming decisions.

Are there any substitutions?

A classic example is when we want to buy a car because we need transport between the company and our place. But there are other substitutions for us if the purpose is to move between sites. We can leverage shared services such as Uber. We can have a contract for hiring cars. We can take public transportation. So, considering substitutions can diversify our options and help us be more considerate while making decisions.

What if we don’t have pre-assumption(your current situation) like what we have now?

This concept is like the point of view from the book ‘Think Again.’ In a data-driven world, our decision-making tends to rely on data input, and we believe we are confident in making decisions with data support. But sometimes, pre-assumptions (or so-called conditions) make us more confused. An example here is a stock investment. Let’s say you have a specific stock share in your market (buy-in at 100 USD), and you see the stock price going down to 80 USD, and you want to buy in it. But the question is: is 80 USD a proper price to in? Although 80 is lower than 100, and you can balance your loss, what if this stock is in a downtrend with bad financial performance? Here is the thing: if you don’t have this stock on hand, will you invest in this stock at 80? This practice helps us think outside our frame and jump to another angle to review decision-making.

So, there are four questions to ask before you make a decision. What are the benefits and costs? What if you don’t go with this decision? Are there substitutions? What if we skip our current frame and pre-assumptions? I hope these four questions help you improve your decision quality.