The topic of Episode 26 is all about diving into what decision making looks like from the perspective of time mindset. As promised in the previous episode, we will dig a little further into different aspects of our day to day productivity and time mindset before we jump into better understanding the different behavioral archetypes and their relationship with time.
Originally, I planned to do a more out of the box podcast on the history of time, but in the last podcast I ended up talking about change and its connection with time mindset and behaviour. And I promised to dig a little further into different aspects of our day to day productivity and time mindset.
So, before we jump into better understanding the different behavioural archetypes and their relationship with time, this episode we will dive into what decision making looks like from the perspective of time mindset.
We all make decisions every day. Some on the conscious level and many on the subconscious level. What is quite interesting, is that we make an average of 35000 decisions each day. Most of them happen on the unconscious level. If you do a quick search and some reading on this topic, you will find that the less conscious decisions you have to make, the better quality those decisions will be.
Now, what does this mean? Well, from the perspective of productivity, it means that you will be able to do your best work if you have well-developed systems and processes and if you automate as much as possible. Now I’m not only referring to your business processes, but your cognitive processes as well. Meaning: having great reliable routines and habits that serve you in a positive way… so you don't waste brainpower on basic things like stopping at a red light.
The more time we spend on decision making, the less time we have to do other things.
So, how do behavioural archetypes affect the decision-making process and is there a difference in how quickly or how slowly we make decisions based on how we are naturally wired?
Understanding how easy or how hard, or how quick or how slow, it is for us to make a reliable decision can affect a lot of things. Things like, how long a task takes, how much time we should allocate, or even, what is the likelihood of sticking to the decision made and completing a task or project.
Let me give you an example… Well, I am not sure if you are driving or not. But it happens that my 2 daughters are right in that age group of learner drivers, and boy oh boy, it brings back some memories.
The other day, I took my younger daughter who is right at the beginning of her driving journey to drive around a car park for an hour. After an hour it wasn't just her who was tired. I can assure you I was just as brain dead.
Yet, swapping places and driving home from there took little to no effort. Why? Because I had the right automation already in place through my many years of experience of driving a car.
When you have no habits or rituals you are like a new driver. Assuming you passed your roadworthy test, you know what the rules of the game are, but you will have to think about every little step. To put that into perspective... when was the last time you had to think about sliding the key in the hole, turning it on, releasing the handbrake while your foot is on the brake and start rolling while your indicator is on, checking your surroundings, making sure no one is in the way, and now lifting your foot off the break, you finally start driving. Even saying all that is tiring!!! The reality is, that if you are an experienced driver, you will do all of this without thinking about it because you have a well-developed ritual around it. You don't have to think about it. The only decision you will make there is that you need to go somewhere. On the other hand, when you are a new driver, every little step I have just described is happening as a conscious, well thought through decision. You're not just deciding that you need to go somewhere, you need to think about all the little steps that are involved in starting the car and getting it to move forward.
Tiring right?
Anyway, what I find fascinating though is how different my two children are in their decision-making processes. My younger one is a system and processes type of girl. She needs to know, she needs to understand and she needs proper information before she does anything. This goes to the point where we spent some time understanding how the steering wheel connects to the car's wheels and how they move. Once we did that, she suddenly had a good understanding of how to make safe turns and things just started to roll. You see, for her, a lack of information put her into a position where she ended up treating the car like a go-kart and steering the wheel madly.
On the other hand, my other daughter did not need the same sound understanding of how things work before she was able to make the same decisions. Her outgoing, curious behavioural style juuust helped her over the hump of how things work, and from that point onwards she was much more interested in when she was going to be able to drive in real traffic. Her decision-making processes were quicker, and she became impatient when she was asked to do the same routine again and again and again. She immediately wanted to drive home after the first session, seeking the thrill of something new. I said no by the way.
Ultimately, they both will end up treating driving as a basic skill. They will develop routines of their own, that will be very similar to all of us, yet they will be slightly different, reflecting their personalities and their special decision-making processes. They will soon develop rituals of their own and will end up having to make just one decision instead of many when driving, and that being where to go.
What I would like to point out here is that we all make decisions in a different manner, but when we understand what is influencing and motivating us, we become more informed decision makers. We will be able to assess how long it will take us, what we can do to speed up the process, and create those highly efficient systems and processes that drive great time management. Knowing and understanding, how we make the decisions themselves, will help you develop the processes needed for things to become habits and rituals quicker, so that we can create more brain space for the important stuff. I am sure if you stop and think about your day to day business operations, you will find a lot of tasks, you don't particularly think about, but you just do. Bringing these tasks into the conscious mind and assessing them, can reveal many inefficiencies, resulting in the creation of new and improved efficient habits and rituals.
I hope I managed to spark some thoughts around the decision-making process. And hopefully, next time you do something on autopilot, you will appreciate it a little bit more, that you now have the choice and brainpower to do something bigger and better.
