Our natural tendency when facing a decision is to gather as much information as is easily available and evaluate our options in light of that information. But because we have limited processing power and can only hold between 3 and 7 concepts in our mind at any given time, we can only evaluate a few bits of information. Unless we are using a decision making technique to keep track of all the information, we can’t possibly consider all the relevant factors.
So here is a simple decision making technique for making better decisions:
Ignore Everything But the Three to Five Most Relevant Factors
That’s it. Just consider the three to five most important factors in the decision and ignore the rest of the information. Why? Because if you don’t have the time or desire to plot out and list all the relevant information, you will be unconsciously eliminating everything else anyway.
Consider the benefits of ignoring excess information:
- It takes less time. Information takes time. Knowing that you can only factor in three to five things means you don’t have to spend extra time trying to find information or worrying that you aren’t being responsible. At some point gathering more information has serious declining returns to scale. That point appears to be after roughly five pieces of information.
- Confidence isn’t overblown. More information has the curious effect of making us more confident in our decision without increasing our ability to choose the best option. If we only factor in a few pieces of information, we are more open to hearing other points of few and less personally invested in the ‘correctness’ of our decision.
- Less confusion. Excess information not only makes us more confident, it also has the potential to confuse us so that we can’t decide what the most important pieces of information are. As we start to exceed our natural limits, our mind responds by shutting down reasoning pathways and leaving us a befuddled mess.
I’ve often thought that people who have trouble making decisions (and not just because they are trying to choose the ‘nicest’ option) are hindered by an inability to exclude information.
Not that you won’t ever make an error doing this. But the underlying thesis here is that it is better to make a bad decision and realize that it’s wrong and take steps to correct it than it is to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what to do and then making a decision that isn’t likely to be any better.
-zot
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