Simplifying decision making

“I try to make one decision that removes 1000 decisions.” – Tim Ferris

Rather than to struggle each time you’re standing in front of the candy aisle, it’s much easier to decide that candy just isn’t for you and skip the aisle altogether. Or that you only buy this or that chocolate brand. Might be a totally different decision for you, but Ferris’ point still holds: making a thousand decision is actually exhausting, even if they are small. Whenever you can find a general rule for your actions, life gets easier in that regard.

What Tim Ferris uses as a life hack works even better for teams.

It can be super frustrating and totally exhausting when every decision escalates into a discussion about tiny details and different perspectives. Aligning your team and focusing everyone on a common mission takes this load off of your team and makes life so much easier for everyone on the team.

But it does more than that: if everyone agrees on a guiding star, decision making can become distributed. When it’s obvious how a decision is made, everyone on the team can make that decision.

What’s required is to get clarity about what actually matters for us as a team and as a company and then communicate this openly and frequently.