Decisions, decisions

 

    Now, here's something a little bit different - not just a post about a book, but the beginnings of an experiment, too. Profile Books have kindly sent me a copy of The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking by Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler, and the idea is that I'm going to use it as a workbook to help with daily decision-making on big issues and small ones - whatever happens to crop up - because 'what to do?' and 'how to do it?' are questions which we all have to answer, and anything that can help make that process easier is worth looking at.

    I am an indecisive person and I think there are two reasons behind that: one is that I want to avoid mistakes if I possibly can and get things right (impossible to do all the time, but I'm an idealist so I try...) and the other is that usually I am good at seeing both sides of an argument or at weighing the pros and cons, but when those two are more or less in balance, how do you decide what to do? So I'm a perfectionist who can grasp all the issues, but then I'm not as skilled at moving on to a definite course of action, either because there's no clear path to choose, or because it might turn out to be the 'wrong' one.

    So that's a bit about me as the guinea pig, now a little bit about the book's structure. There are four sections, 'How to improve yourself', 'How to understand yourself better', How to understand others better' and 'How to improve others'. In each of these are some of the fifty decision-making models, the first of which is The Eisenhower Matrix, or How To Work More Efficiently. That's something I would love to know how to do, so I shall start there and see how I get on - stay tuned for progress reports.

     One more thing for now, Profile are offering a 10% discount on the book (the net price is inclusive of post and packing to UK addresses only, and is available up to the end of April). All you have to do is email [email protected] and quote 'Bloggers' Challenge special offer'.

    I don't think we've had a book of this type on the blog before so it will be interesting to see what you all make of it as well as how I get on working through it. Here we go...   

Comments

[Dark Puss]

"is that I want to avoid mistakes if I possibly can"

I'd say that perspective is holding you back in some ways. You have to embrace the possibility of making mistakes and then learning from them, real progress does not come from always chosing the "right" path and as you say often that is not at all easy to identify.

Books like these are probably useful (I've read dozens) but taking the plunge and initiating action and then learning from both success and failure is much more important. I spent far to long reading about "management" (personal and institutional) rather than actually getting down to doing it. Yes I've made mistakes, some quite significant ones on occasion, but I would not have made much progress in my life if I hadn't been prepared to do that - not that it is fun at the time.

Do let us know how you get on and what you learned from your errors.

[Lindsay]

Oh dear, I can't decide whether to comment or not! Maybe not, or maybe tomorrow?

[dovegreyreader]

good to see you've taken up Profile's challenge Karen! I read the e mail and just couldn't see how I'd have the time for the daily blog post they were askiing for nor the time to write the lists and then decide what to do when. Probably because I could better spend the time getting all those things on the list done. I suspect my current day job helps because I have limited time in which to prioritise, plan, action and implement what I have to do and I suspect I stay in that reasonably organised mode when I stop. I have no problem making mistakes either.. it's a daily occurrence so they tell me:-) Look forward to seeing how you get on.

[Best moisturiser]

If only a book could tell you how to make the right decision...