export_ofoct.com

[00:00.41] Life is full of choices, some inconsequential, some really significant.

[00:07.59] But sometimes it can be hard to make the correct one.

[00:12.36] What are the obstacles that stand between us and a good outcome?

[00:17.67] Some of us just find it hard to decide.

[00:21.66] Alice Boyes, writing for Harvard Business Review, tells us this can be connected to perfectionism, where people attempt to find a perfect solution to any problem and are unable to move forward when they can't find one.

[00:39.19] It might seem that being indecisive would stop us making the right decision, but in fact it could actually help us make the correct ones.

[00:49.82] Susan Krauss in Psychology Today reminds us that people often make bad decisions because they base them on preconceptions rather than the context in which things happen.

[01:06.28] She highlights a paper by researcher Iris Schneider which finds that indecisive people are more likely to look at different perspectives and use them to come to a better decision.

[01:17.71] So, it could be that a more significant barrier to making the best choice is our cognitive biases.

[01:25.41] David Robson, speaking to the BBC's Crowd Science, tells us that intelligence can sometimes stop people making the right decision. People sometimes use intelligence to invent justifications for irrational beliefs.

[01:43.74] He believes that humility is key to making a good decision.

[01:49.05] People who can accept that they might be wrong are more likely to consider different viewpoints.

[01:55.96] He is backed up on this by Jeff Bezos.

[01:59.41] Tech CEO Jason Fried recalls the Amazon founder saying how the people who were right a lot of the time were the people who often changed their minds.

[02:11.10] So, maybe rather than indecision, it might be intelligence and decisiveness, backed up by our biases that actually stop us making good choices.

[02:24.65] While humility and indecisiveness could help us pick the best option.