Chapter 5: Making Decisions
Decision Making
Decision making is a key component in choosing a career and it is often a difficult process for people. Most of us were not given much education or guidance on how to make a decision and therefore we often rely on habits we have built that may or may not support our best interests. The following are some reflection questions to get us started as we work to increase self awareness and increase decision making skills.
- How do you typically make decisions?
- Are they wise ones?
- Are they well thought out and researched, or are they impulsive?
- Are you often happy with the outcomes of your decisions?
- Do you tend to do what your parents, your partner, or others want you to do?
- Do you procrastinate because you have a hard time making decisions?
- Have you chosen jobs or careers because they sounded good or because you just had to pay the bills?
People often don’t have a concrete decision making strategy when it comes to important decisions. How about romance? Decisions to marry or have children? We can be very impulsive in these areas of our lives! However, buying a house is often a slow, deliberate process possibly because there is so much involved. You might spend even more time in the decision making process when you are buying a car (researching options, test driving, fine tuning what you want [like color], etc).
The decision you are faced with now (what to study and what career to pursue) is really a BIG one! You are investing time, money, and energy to get your degree. So, let’s talk about how to be thoughtful with this decision. Take your time. Don’t rush. Don’t choose a career out of frustration or because you feel rushed. If you haven’t made a decision at the end of this class, that’s ok. That just means that you need more time (or information) and that you are willing to spend additional time doing research and contemplating your choices. In short, we want your career/major decision process to look more like the car, as opposed to the romance, example above!
Decision making can be reliable, if you consider the following principles.
- Big decisions should be supported by big research, thorough analysis, time well spent in consideration, and thoughtful planning.
- After all that research, analysis and planning, however, we do need to consider our intuition and gut feelings as well!
- They say that career decisions should be made with a combination of both: research, weighing pros and cons, and being rational PLUS feelings, intuition and for some folks, spiritual guidance as well!
In this class, you are being asked to use a slow, rational, research-based process to decide on a career. However, I don’t want you to feel obligated to pick a career by the end of this class! It’s a huge decision. Again, take your time!
Before we dive into the specifics of a step-by-step process and learn about other tools that could be helpful in this process, we are going to share a video on why it is hard to make h