Hello Stas Borukhoff here with another post on a topic I think is very important for people today. We all live in a very fast-paced world. The demands on us are constantly growing and yet the time we have remains the same. Thanks to technology we can now manage relationships with practically everyone we have ever known, for better or worse. From there you factor in the multitude of things seeking to get and hold our attention. As Gary Vaynerchuk says, “This is an attention economy.”, and what you get is a sea of choices we must make every day. Some of those choices include what to pay attention to and what to ignore. We have become very good at ignoring things in a split second. So here is the big problem. People are making more decisions than ever and yet most of them are in real time which doesn’t leave you time to get information to make informed decisions. My guess is this is reducing the overall quality of choices we are making.
So we identified the problem, but let’s dig into to it a little more. Let’s use chess as an example. When strategy matters, you have to think about your choice and the repercussions of your moves. You don’t just make choices without thinking, you need to look at the board and gather information to make the most educated decision you can in the short moment. Chess is like life, there are so many ways things could turn out. People are speeding up choice making, and thinking less. Look at the way people make choices about food, they are choosing fast over smart. This doesn’t just end with food, how about relationships? Speed dating, app dating, and online dating often give people little information about the person they are planning on having a relationship with. Three seconds to swipe right or left is hardly an informed decision. We have all heard the saying that successful people are quick to make decisions and slow to change them, but that thinking simply doesn’t work anymore. Today, you have to make informed decisions and be quick to change them if needed.
So here are 3 powerful benefits of making informed decisions
1- Overcoming Hindsight
When things move fast, you can rack up regret. This is true in our business and personal lives. As I talked about in my post about fake profiles and fake people, time is the resource you can’t get back. You can always make more money but you can’t get back the time consequences of your poorly informed decisions. This can include decisions made about strategies, people, and even relationships. By making an informed decision, you lessen the need to learn form costly mistakes. You can still make mistakes, but they are likely to be smaller ones the more informed your decisions are. Don’t live your life going from one bad choice to another. Many entrepreneurs experience this in marketing. They do random acts of marketing, going from one failed attempt to another. This makes success very elusive.
Forethought is Better than Hindsight
2 – Success in Execution
Many people are executing on wrong plans. Execution alone can cause failure but let’s say you do execute, but you are executing on a flawed plan. This type of failure is hard to handle because you can’t know all possible plans and the business environment is full of variables. The best you can do is be as informed as possible when making choices. In the article I wrote on my Stas Borukhoff Medium blog about how to hire freelancers, I talk about vetting people to make sure you find the right fit, and avoid fraudulent scammers. The world is full of them unfortunately and the online world only makes it easier to create profiles that aren’t real. This is one of the reasons we built MobiLine app. By integrating video profiles, you get away from the fabricated world of profile photos and bios and get to see and hear the actual person. This helps you make an informed decision. Informed decisions allow you to execute with more confidence because they are data driven. The less information you have when making a decision, the more opportunity that things can go horribly wrong.
3 – Reducing Risk
Risk is a big factor in making decisions. Whether it is hiring a person, branding decisions, buying something, or reaching out to meet someone. Having information before you decide gives you an edge. You wouldn’t dare hire a nanny or babysitter without meeting them first, employers don’t hire people without an application or resume, everywhere in our society important decisions are generally made by getting some initial information first before even proceeding. This reduces the risk and allows you to filter out high risk bad decisions. We built this into the heart of Mobiline. You not only get to preview video profiles to get a real feel of who the person is before you reach out to them, but you also get to preview incoming calls with video to see who it is and what they want before you answer.
This all adds up to saving you time, giving you information to make informed decisions in our fast paced high demand world. It also allows you to integrate more human communications while using technology.
The goal of this post is to raise awareness of this trend in quick uninformed decision making. It isn’t good for business, it isn’t good for your personal life, and often you can link this type of decision making to many mistakes in your life. Fear of loss is a sales tactic which is used to make people make decisions instead of thinking about it. Our natural inclination is to wait and it is a defense mechanism. One great lifehack when dealing with salespeople is to step away and think about it outside of the moment. Trust me, rarely is it going to go away. If it is you can find it again. If you really care about the decision, it deserves some thought. Slow down, get information, and make educated decisions that reduce risk, minimize mistakes, and help you execute with confidence.
If you want to reach out to me, just hit contact button on my Stas Borukhoff site and send me a message. Also I would love to hear your thoughts on this post. Do you think people are making more informed decisions or less informed decisions? How do you think mindsets are changing or need to change to keep up with current changes in society and technology? Let me know below.
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