Many decisions we have to make on a day to day basis are much easier than we treat them as. This is a partial guide to how you can recognise that and start lowering the cost of decision making.
I thought of this post at the weekend while watching "The Rescue", an (excellent) documentary about the Tham Luang cave rescue. The rescuers had to make (or rather, convince the officials in charge to make) an "easy" decision of your second sort: either they could go with an extremely risky plan in which some (and quite possibly all) of the boys in the cave were likely to die, or they could wait for the end of the monsoon, in which case all the boys were essentially certain to die. Complicating the problem, the officials had promised that only completely safe methods of extracting the boys would be considered. Thankfully, the rescuers found a way to convince the officials to let them try: they invited the officials to a rehearsal of their plan. This showed them that the crazy-sounding plan actually had some thought behind it, and made them think it had at least some chance of success.
Interesting to read this as I just used one of my easy decision making methods - choosing where to get lunch (what's the nearest decent burger) and choosing what to order (asked the server). A large part of my personal wellbeing comes from making easy decisions fast and ensuring I'm not overusing my brain for then
I thought of this post at the weekend while watching "The Rescue", an (excellent) documentary about the Tham Luang cave rescue. The rescuers had to make (or rather, convince the officials in charge to make) an "easy" decision of your second sort: either they could go with an extremely risky plan in which some (and quite possibly all) of the boys in the cave were likely to die, or they could wait for the end of the monsoon, in which case all the boys were essentially certain to die. Complicating the problem, the officials had promised that only completely safe methods of extracting the boys would be considered. Thankfully, the rescuers found a way to convince the officials to let them try: they invited the officials to a rehearsal of their plan. This showed them that the crazy-sounding plan actually had some thought behind it, and made them think it had at least some chance of success.
Interesting to read this as I just used one of my easy decision making methods - choosing where to get lunch (what's the nearest decent burger) and choosing what to order (asked the server). A large part of my personal wellbeing comes from making easy decisions fast and ensuring I'm not overusing my brain for then