London 06-07/2016 - Day 3: how to...

Planned lunch got cancelled at very short notice (2 hours...). Not impressed.
I love to plan. And I had my itinerary carefully planned out. With just 10 days in London, I wanted to make sure to make the most of it and at such short notice, it was impossible to plan an alternative lunch. Anyway, I also realize that these things happen. C'est la vie!

I spent the afternoon at a workshop entitled 'How to make up your mind' organized by the School of Life. Apparently our brain has a limited capacity to make decisions throughout the day. So, the advice is to try to remove decision-making where possible. Such as deciding what to wear (I love my wardrobe and like making those decisions - so not applicable to me), what to have for breakfast, how to get to work etc. Delegating or simply dropping things are other options to help with this.

Here are a few steps to help with decision-making, especially those bigger ones:
1) Know your values - this is an interesting one for me. As part of the coaching course, I had to do an exercise on this and I feel that I am not very clear on my own values. Work needs to be done here!
2) Know what you want to achieve - this one is much clearer to me.
3) Create a plan - having started on this already.
4) Prioritize - also well under way!
5) Celebrate milestones - well, first I need to set those milestones.

In relation to 3), here are some steps to support you in creating a plan:
1) Identify the decision: write it down, be as specific as possible, including a timeline
2) Explore the underlying issues: what is making it hard? Again, be as specific as possible.
3) Imagine the worst: including what might happen if you don't take a decision?
4) Generate options: quantity over quality - write down anything that comes to mind without judging/assessing each option
5) Design an experiment: what resources will you need? What measures can be put into place to mitigate risk? How are you going to collect data?
6) Take the first step!

I feel I have take many first steps already. Including expanding my library of self-help books:

I feel all of them will come in handy in the upcoming months! I shall share my newly acquired wisdom with you in due course.