Economic Issues
The Cost of Decisions -By Mayowa Lala
Peter Drucker once cited the case of surgeons who are well known to have taken thousands of risky decisions over many centuries. And they have learned to apply rules to their decision making process. Situations that are not critical and self-correcting are left to occasional check-ups. Such situations are not worth taking life-risking operation upon. Such cases do not require urgent decisions.
Earlier, I said you should stop being soft with how you allow people to set their decisions or agenda in your life. If you esteem your life to be precious, you will embrace your freedom to choose what to invest your life and time upon. You don’t have to make many decisions. Peter Drucker once said “good decision makers don’t make many decisions.” I also heard Jeff Bezos, who is unarguably one the most successful men of our time, when he talked about the number of key decisions he likes to take daily, Jeff said he is okay with three decisions. Warren Buffet is another astute man, who is the smartest and most successful investor of our time. Warren once said he is okay with three smart decisions in a year.
The reason why we take our time to study people, books, opportunities, real life events… is because we want to make very quality decisions. A single wrong decision taken on a delicate life matter can wipe you out completely, and you may not be able to recover throughout your lifetime except you are lucky to have a great help. On the other hand, a few smart decisions can also change your entire life. Every decision you make will cost you resources such as time, money, energy, brainpower, attention, social capital etc…
Every decision need action or else the decision remains a fantasy. Action demands that resources must be expended. Action cost resources, and resources are limited and scarce. An ‘opportunity cost’ is going on here. Therefore we should take the position of an investment manager in our lives, to manage the deposit of GRACE OF TIME AND LIFE that the ALMIGHTY has bestowed upon us. We must make the best use of resources by making smart decisions. Our resources must be expended on worthwhile decisions only. Even if the decision we have to make is one, then we need our decisions to be a very smart decisions. We need to make informed decisions. We don’t need to rush. And so, we will say a lot of NOs to people.
Peter Drucker once cited the case of surgeons who are well known to have taken thousands of risky decisions over many centuries. And they have learned to apply rules to their decision making process. Situations that are not critical and self-correcting are left to occasional check-ups. Such situations are not worth taking life-risking operation upon. Such cases do not require urgent decisions. On the other hand, there are situations that are critical, life-threatening and they are not self-correcting. Such situations require decisions to be made – a fast and drastic decision for that matter.
Unnecessary decisions not only waste time and resources, they threaten to make other decisions ineffectual. – Peter Drucker
What are we learning? We are learning about decisions and the cost of decisions. Make quality decision, friends, because our entire life results are going to be the sum of all the decisions that we make.
