How do you feel about making decisions at work? Do you:

• Torture yourself by running disastrous scenarios through your mind over and over again?
• Put making decisions on the back burner because you just don’t know how you feel about them?
• Avoid or put off getting back to customers or coworkers when they’ve asked for your opinion?

Sure it can be challenging, but churning over options for a long time doesn’t help you make better choices and making decisions doesn’t have to be as hard as we often make it.

We make hundreds of decisions every day, most of them are pretty simple like ‘What should I wear today?’ or ‘Crest or Colgate?’ Other choices have further reaching consequences and are therefore not as simple. Many people are paralyzed by fear when faced with making more difficult decisions and end up doing nothing at all – which is the worst choice to make. After all, if you don’t make a decision it will be made for you, and it may be the complete opposite of what you really wanted. Michelle Obama said ‘You can’t make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.’ Good advice.

Would you like to be able to make decisions more quickly? The first thing you’ve got to come to terms with the fact that there is no such thing as a perfect decision. Some people find traditional decision-making tools such as writing lists of options helpful while others find that process in itself overwhelming. ‘Truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.’ according to Malcolm Gladwell. Here’s how to do it:

Use your intuition – Research says that about 90% of decisions are made this way. With this approach your creative imagination is used to recognize possibilities for your brain to analyze. In fact, this natural style of decision making is being used to replace conventional decision making processes in the U.S. Army – because it works!

Simply run a scenario through your head and using a combination of your experience and gut instincts think about whether it will work or not. If the answer is YES! Move ahead. If you think it won’t work, make some adjustments and take another mental run through. If it still doesn’t make sense go back to the drawing board and start over.

Question your decision – once you’ve made up your mind, check in with yourself by asking why you feel this is the best choice. Make sure your decision lines up with your personal, professional and company values. Taking this extra step will give your mind a chance to go through the answers behind your initial instincts so that you can be assured that you made the best choice available.

If you’re having trouble – knowing what to do act like someone is watching you – or that you are taking a test. Did you ever do a better job because you knew someone was critiquing you? That’s the whole idea behind this strategy. How would you handle this if you knew you were being judged?

A variation of this is to imagine someone you have a great respect for maybe it’s your Grandmother, a favorite teacher or anyone else you really look up to being in this same situation. What would they do? Often you’ll know exactly what to do when you imagine someone else doing it.

One last word of advice on decisions from Harry S. Truman – ‘Once a decision was made, I didn’t worry about it afterward.