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Did you know that there is actually a science when it comes to decision-making? Well now you do!

According to researchers Jack Soll and John Payne of Duke and Katherine Milkman of the University of Pennsylvania, in their recently released  chapter called “A User’s Guide to Debiasing”, they prove how humans often make predictable and not so smart decisions and point out some really useful insights on how the process should be.

For our own benefit:

1. Practice mental time travel

Don’t grow overconfident. It’s proven that one of the commonly made mistakes when it comes to decision-making is failing to imagine how things would be or how the scenarios could change years after you’ve made your choice.

2. Don’t make passionate decisions, i.e. hungry, angry, sleepy, etc

Researchers have showed that human beings don’t make good deaccessions when under a stressed mental state because we become much more susceptible to bias. Delaying a crucial decision, if possible, might be preferable to making it under conditions of stress.

3. Estimate twice, decide once

Apparently, the logic of having a group of people to decide on one subject also works if applied to oneself. What this means is that when you need to make a decision and your evaluating and researching to be as much informed as you can be, when you arrive to an estimate don’t stand with that as the ultimate answer, but do the same thing again (not necessarily after the first exercise). And then, when you have both estimates, take the average between the two and you’ll come to a better decision than if you would’ve taken either of them on its own.

4. Plan before deciding

When you are taking decisions that will be applicable in the long-term, you should have in mind that in order for it to happen, you have to conquer the short-term goals first that in the end will add up to your long-term objective.

 5. Decide in advance

Acknowledging that you lack the willpower to make a good decision can itself be the healthiest decision you make. Once you have the will power to say to decide in the present is that you will be able to walk towards the direction of the future you want.