For some strange reason I remember a snippet from the Driver’s Ed class I took back in 10^th grade. They were trying to get a bunch of us 15 ½ year-olds to pay attention to the road and make smart decisions in a short amount of time. So if up ahead I see flashing yellow lights, I decide to slow down and move over to the right lane, for instance. The method they taught for this was IPDE: Identify, Predict, Decide, and Execute.

Now the thought of moving through a four-step process while hurtling down the road at 45 mph is a little far-fetched. Still it is a great procedure when faced with a decision. First, you identify the problem. Next, you predict the potential outcomes. Third, decide what option you wish to pursue, and finally, execute that decision.

The best thing about IPDE is that is it designed to take place over a relatively short period of time, obviously while driving. If you are zooming down the highway, you can’t take too long to decide what you want to do. Typically in life there is no need to take a long time to make a decision. If you spend a lot of time looking out at your different options and weighing the pros and cons of each, you often end up doing nothing at all. This is called “analysis paralysis.” Basically you can’t make a decision because of all the data you have accumulated. You feel like you are making forward progress because you are doing something, the analysis, but in reality you are moving in a circle because you keep coming back to the same place.

In multiple-choice test taking studies have found that when someone does not immediately know the answer to a question, if they go with their gut instinct they are correct more often than if they spend a lot of time analyzing the different answers. In essence, if you think about things too much, you often convince yourself that the correct answer is wrong and vice versa. So for most decisions that need to be made by you, going with your gut instinct often will prove to be the correct choice.

So with that in mind, the IPDE method actually has a lot to speak about. Obviously identifying that there is a decision to be made in the first place is very important. Many of us intentionally ignore the fact that we have an issue that needs a decision until it is so late that the decision is made for us. Often this choice is not the optimal one and if we had but looked earlier, the outcome would be very different.

Once you identify there is an issue that needs be resolved, the rest of the process should be automatic. You need to determine what your options are and quickly rank them and choose what you feel, at that moment, would be the best choice. Remember you will never have perfect information so you can only be judged on the choice you made based on what you knew at the time. History may ultimately prove that it was the wrong decision but there is no shame in making the right choice at the time.

Then finally, you need to take action. All the decisions in the world mean nothing if you never act on them. Truly the saddest thing in our lives is looking back and wondering what could have been if we had only acted. So take action and don’t worry so much about what might have been.

Now obviously, choosing between two cancer-fighting procedures should require more thought and research than choosing which vacuum cleaner to buy, but ultimately, you should become comfortable with determining your options and choosing one in a relatively short period of time. Then your stress of having to make a decision will become much less.