Organized Living Requires Logical Decision Making

The achievement of organized living will require constant decision making in order to set priorities and achieve clutter control.

Historically, decision making has long been recognized as a challenging activity.

"Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide. "

Napoleon Bonaparte

Decision making can be made even more challenging because of:

emotional interference

no knowledge or understanding of the decision making process

lack of experience with the decision making process

Lack of awareness of the questions that need to be asked to promote decision making

Decision making can be thought of as a cognitive process whereby an individual chooses between a number of alternatives so there is a single course of action or outcome.

Logical and informed decision making is essential to the provess of getting organized. Emotional decision making seldom leads to the control needed for organized living.

coin_toss There are many ways to make a decision such as tossing a coin , however a coin toss might not be the best method for gaining more control of your life! Control is only achieved if you can reasonably predict the outcome from the decision making process. 50% odds in a coin toss are not good enough odds for me!

If you have difficulty getting organized it could be because you find decision making difficult.

Let's examine each of the reasons for difficulty with decision making more clearly to see how they influence organized living.

Difficulty with making decisions for organized living?

Emotional interference

Human beings might be made of flesh and bone but it is our emotions that control us. Emotions can make it difficult for some people to make even the simplest decisions needed for organized living such as:

"Do I toss or do I keep?"
"If I keep it where do I put it?"
"If I put it somewhere how do I get it when I need it again?" etc etc

If you see yourself in this description you are not alone. In fact most decisions you make are based on you are feeling and not what are thinking!

Making decisions from an emotional base will very seldom lead to control. The only way to stop the emotional interference is to be aware of its influence. When you are having difficulty with a decision ask yourself these two questions.

What am I thinking about this?
What am I feeling about this?

Reflecting on the answers to these two questions will reveal whether it is the logic or the emotion that is influencing your decision.

Lack of experience with decision making

Like any other skill, without opportunities to practice making decisions your confidence and competence will be reduced!

If you have not had much experience with decision making you may not be very good at it.

Often parents will try to protect their children from the risks of poor decision making by making decisions for them. Unfortunately these well intention parents rob their children of the opportunity to learn a very important skill. You can never learn how to make good decisions if you never make a bad one!

Decision making carries with it a risk that not all the decisions you make will be good, or work out exactly the way you think. But as with any skill practicing decision making can lead to improvement.

Your goal should be to make decisions that produce consistent outcomes. Unless you are reasonably sure of the outcome making decisions can be scary. In a coin toss you can predict the results with a 50% accuracy. There are only two results possible so you will be right 50% of the time!

However, you really want a much higher probability than 50% when you are trying to achieve control through organized living.

No knowledge or understanding of the decision making process

If you want to explore the decision making process in more detail you can increase your decision making confidence here. Since Dr. David McDermott has done a great job of an in depth analysis on his decision making site I will not repeat that here.

Lack of awareness of the questions that need to be asked to promote decision making

Here are some decisions that are needed when trying to achieve organized living especially if you are trying to improve your clutter control habits:

Will I need this again?
Is this item fragile and does it require special storage
Does this item or piece of mail required any action now or in the near future
How often will I use this item?
Does this item add value and meaning to my life?

At every point in the clutter control process you need to engage in decision making for organized living.

Will you make the decisions you need to in a timely way or put it off?

Will you let your emotions interfere and shop 'til you drop in order to meet your emotional needs?

Will you avoid a decision altogether because of fear of deciding badly?

Will you put off the decision because you are unsure of what questions are needed for getting organized or clutter control?

You decide.

Beverly OMalley, EzineArticles.com Platinum Author

Now ranked in the top 20 of 1035 authors who are writing on personal organization and home organization topics.

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