Thanks to RSS, the average blogger has no social obligation to publish posts in a timely manner, unless they promise to do so.  So there’s no need for the average blogger to start their posts with phrases like, “I haven’t written for a while because <insert excuse here>”, because 1) no one but your close friends really care why you haven’t written (and they will be looking elsewhere for this kind of information), and 2) for each day that you fail to publish one of your super interesting posts, there are a million other bloggers/microbloggers who do, and therefore, your blog’s faithful readers have more than enough reading material to satisfy their social web needs.  My point here is: don’t apologize, relax, and publish good quality posts whenever you can (and this is enough reason for low publishing frequency).

This wasn’t my excuse in disguise.

Let’s talk about decision making.

Free will and decision making

If we believe in free will, then we need to accept that decision making is an important part of being human.  Our decisions, big or small, determine if we will reach our short- and long-term goals.  Therefore, decision making deserves much more thought and time than we are usually ready to allocate to it.

Luckily, the world and our bodies are robust enough to endure many bad decisions.  But the better decisions we make, the better the quality of our life.

In what follows, I plan to write of the heuristics that I have found to be useful in my own experience with making decisions — which should explain the preaching tone of the writing .

Some notes on how to decide

Take decision making seriously.  Sit down, think about your life, talk to people, and do research.  This is time well spent.

Begin with the end in mind.

Avoid making very big decisions.  Lessen the risk attributed to your final decision as much as possible.  Remember that you can never see the whole picture until you’ve acted on your decision.  No matter how much thorough thinking you put into it, your decision is based on a set of choices that you have induced from vague and incomplete information. 

An important heuristic in decision making – though hard to admit – is that the better decision is the one that requires the harder work to act upon.

Decide ahead if possible.  This is one of the best ways to ensure good decisions.  You’ll spend enough time for research and thought and you’ll be able to customize your decision in a way that suits you best.  This prepares you mentally for acting on your decision when the time comes.  It also prevents any adverse affects that hormones or any other sort of temporal distractions can have on your mental process.

Remember that your decisions are for you.  You can only be useful to other people if you are happy and satisfied with who you are.  Don’t lie to yourself and boldly consider your needs.  Make sure your decisions will entail them.

Don’t make decisions that would make life hard on others.

Once you’ve made the decision

Try explaining your reasoning out loud for yourself (or friends and family who have experience in the area).  Check to see if it sounds right.  Does it support or undermine your values?  Is this the kind of decision you want to be attributed to?  In the words of one blogger, ask yourself, “Is this me?”.  Are you ready and willing to defend your decision if needed?  My advice would be to write down your line of reasoning (enumerate all the pros and cons of your available choices), to be able to look back on, in case you’re ever in doubt.

There might be times when you feel you’ve made mistakes.  Having a written statement to remind you of the reasons behind your decision, will help you get through.

Some people have a tendency to say, “this can’t be done” or “you’re not the kind of person to do this kind of thing”.  Don’t mind them.  As Arnold Bennett beautifully said,

The real tragedy is the tragedy of the man who never in his life braces himself for his one supreme effort, who never stretches to his full capacity, never stands up to his full stature.