Make Decisions in Advance

I found an old article called Make Decisions in Advance from Productive Strategies. I blog it because i like it a lot.

No matter if you are deciding which restaurant to go for dinner, or which implementation is better for your project - you spend your time on those decision making cycle. The article suggests to document all those findings, or even the actual decision before the decision making point, you will save your time greatly:

… If I’m in a video store trying to pick out a move to watch that evening, there is a certain amount of time that will go into evaluating the options and selecting a video. From personal experience, this process can take 10 to 20 minutes easily.

For most people this 10 to 20 minutes is completely wasted time because at some point in the last 6 months they have already made a decision about a movie they would like to see, but they just don’t remember. When a friend tells you about a movie they saw in the theater and you decide you want to rent it, you’ve made a decision to see that movie. If you remembered that decision when you entered the movie store it would just be a matter of finding it and renting it…

The key point is to jot down your thoughts regularly.

Make Decisions in Advance - [Productive Strategies]