Decision Making
Log
Experience
I measured my behavior around decision making from Saturday (1/14) to Tuesday (1/17). My decision making is so bad that tracking my behavior didn’t really affect it. I logged my decision making habits throughout the day. I just kept the spreadsheet open rather than set specific times to log my behavior. I also checked the spreadsheet at the end of the day to make sure I logged everything. While logging did not affect my behavior, it was interesting to measure how much time it actually took me to make decisions. I knew that, for example, getting ready took me long since that’s something I do everyday. I, however, did not knowing how much I struggled with decision making in other aspects and how it negatively impacts my life. I noticed that people pleasing and hunger have a heavy influence on how long decision making takes me. Having too few tasks (which I did not experience the past few days) or too many tasks also negatively impact my decision making.
Diagrams
What I would do differently
I thought that I got a good insight on my behavior around decision making from this short period given that I actually had to make a lot of decisions, some of which I only have to make once a quarter. I think interesting things to try would be to more heavily track my decision making in the morning as I find that to be the time I most strongly struggle making decisions. For example, I could track my decision making behavior every 7 minutes in the morning. I think 7 minutes would be a good chunk of time as it’s shorter than 10 minutes, but not as short as 5 minutes, so it would give me sometime to perform tasks. I believe tracking my behavior more closely could force me to make faster decisions.
It would also be interesting to track my behavior while having an accountability system (like a friend for example) over a long period of time. I’m wondering if having an accountability system only works short term or if it would still be effective over a long period of time.
