In today’s Wednesday Wisdom I want to talk about decision making. I’m sure you made some pretty clear decisions at the end of last year about how you wanted 2016 to play out. I bet you probably reflected on these for many hours and days, but have you ever stopped to consider what impact the many trivial decisions we are making on a daily basis have on your success.
Did you know that in a 2011 study by K. Douglas reported in the New Scientist revealed that we make 10,000 trivial decisions every day. Often these decisions are so trivial that we don’t fully think about their consequences, but over time a number of these trivial decisions can magnify to have a great impact on our lives.
As a business owner it is easy to get sucked into the vortex of buying new pieces of software to help your business. I recently reviewed all the different pieces of software I had and was shocked to find it totaled close to £1,000 – a CRM subscription, Vimeo Plus, Amazon S3, Roboform, Google Apps for business, Echosign, Abobe pdf converter, web hosting fees to name but a few, and don’t get me started on the number of domain names I own. You see individually these were all trivial decisions – USD30-50 – but you see how over time they have accumulated and now have a dramatic impact on the profitability of my business.
And its the same in life too. It is the small decisions that really shape what happens our life. Should I work out today? Should I eat this bar of chocolate? Each decision in itself is not critical but over time they mount up and my poor decisions, over the last 18 months, around eating chocolate bars has resulted in me gaining a dress size. Ouch!
So my challenge to you today is to think more consciously about your decisions and reflect on what longer term impact they will have. You see everything in life is inter-connected so what happens is a ripple effect. Its the law of cause and effect.
As always I’d love to hear about your trivial decisions and the impact they have had. You can connect to me on my facebook page.
Have an inspired rest of the week.
Julia Felton (aka The Business Wrangler) is the founder of Business HorsePower. Business leaders, entrepreneurs and executives hire her to accelerate their business performance by harnessing the energy of their people to work more collaboratively together. By aligning purpose with actions the team achieves exponential results as everyone starts pulling in the same direction.
Julia believes that business is a force for good and through designing purpose-driven businesses that leverage the laws of nature, and the herd, you can create businesses founded on the principles of connection, collaboration and community that make a significant impact in the world.
