Tag: “Decision Making”

The human brain uses a proactive system and a reactive system to deal with the different tasks that are imposed on us on a daily basis. The proactive system uses fluid intelligence to connect the dots of the moving parts that make up each challenge and come up with an appropriate plan of action. On the other hand, the reactive system is quick to reorient itself when the challenge is immediate, urgent, or catches you off guard, and needs to solve problems quickly in seemingly new situations.

According to the Cambridge dictionary, a strategy is a detailed plan for achieving success in situations such as war, politics, business, industry, or sport, or the skill of planning for such situations.

One of the fundamental principles on which the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology is based on — in order to achieve an effective life with the least amount of stress — is the need to keep a clear head.

Imagine that after a crazy urge to gamble all your life savings you enter into a casino. You have in front of you a line of slot machines. To be capable of becoming a millionaire you should play the one that has the highest probability of winning, but obviously, you don’t know which one is the right one. So you need to try all of them an indefinite number of times to determine which one’s better. If you play too much in each slot you can end up wasting all your money in losing machines. If you decide to stay in one that seems the one after a few tries, but it isn’t, you’ll end up losing all your money to it.

Jumping to conclusions is a cognitive distortion that occurs when we make a decision, or we judge something without having all the facts that are necessary. It is something extremely common, and you might just find yourself doing it on a daily basis. It happens because we aren’t capable of actually distinguishing what we see from what we are taking for granted.