Budgeting Your Time

Once you've identified and contradicted the reasons for taking too long to make a decision, the third step is to set a deadline for the decision. Make sure to allow yourself a reasonable amount of time – but don't allow too much, as that will encourage procrastination.

nce you've identified and contradicted the reasons for taking too long to make a decision, the third step is to set a deadline for the decision. Make sure to allow yourself a reasonable amount of time – but don't allow too much, as that will encourage procrastination. Once you've set out how long you're going to allow yourself to reach a decision, the fourth step is to budget time for each decision-making task within your deadline.

There are essentially four decision-making tasks: define your objective, create your options, assess your options, and finally, choose the best option. By setting up a time line for each of these steps, you'll find it easier to resist the temptation to keep looking for more information and instead focus on what you've already got.

Recall Yvette, who's starting a language school. She has completed the first two steps to avoid information overload, listing the reasons for delay and contradicting them. She now performs the third step by recognizing that she has only three days to complete the process if she's to advertise courses in time. Finally, she completes the fourth step by allowing herself the rest of the day to create her options, the next day to assess the options, and Friday to choose the best option.

Now consider this example. William is a travel agent. He wants to introduce a new tour to his customers, but can't decide which tour to choose. William decides to take action to try to avoid information overload.

He starts by recognizing that he's struggling with the decision because he thinks it could make or break his business. He quickly counters this mindset, however. To do this, he tells himself that it's unlikely that this one decision could ruin his company. He decides he needs to focus instead on making the best decision he can.

Next, he decides he needs to make a decision within three weeks. So William plans to take two weeks to investigate the potential vacation packages he can offer. Then he'll allow himself a week to assess these and choose one.

However, William runs out of time before making a satisfactory decision. This is because while he starts out right by creating his options, he fails to set aside specific time for choosing an option, instead bundling this task together with his assessment of the options. As a result, he scrambles at the last minute and the decision suffers.

QUESTION

Ingrid is a process improvement specialist. She's helping to develop a customer survey for a client and needs to decide on the best method for this particular survey. But she's been struggling to move beyond her review of what she did in similar past instances.

Which actions relate to the third and fourth steps of overcoming information overload?

1. She allows herself two days to make up her mind
2. She gives herself four hours to generate options, one day to assess them, and an afternoon to choose the best one
3. She informs her client that she needs more time in order to properly research options for his needs
4. She consults outside help for an opinion on the things that she's examined so far and to solicit advice on what else to consider

Setting a deadline for the decision is the third step.

Budgeting time for each decision-making task within the deadline is the fourth step for overcoming information overload.

The third and fourth steps are about setting yourself a deadline and budgeting your time to accomplish your tasks within that schedule. Asking for more time isn't part of this.

The third and fourth steps are about setting a deadline and budgeting your time to make a decision. Consulting outside help to access more information isn't part of these steps.

Information overload is when you have so much information that it prevents you from making a particular decision. Signs of information overload include confusion, inability to relax, and difficulty sleeping.

To overcome information overload when it comes to making decisions, you can follow four steps. First, list the reasons that you're taking too long to make your decision. Second, for each reason, write a sentence to contradict it. Third, set a deadline to make your decision. And fourth, budget your time so that you can accomplish your decision-making tasks within your deadline.

I have been teaching and training agents, team leaders, supervisors, managers and admins of call centers and other businesses in BPO related fields. This series, comes as a result of that experience. I have more than 4,000 modules that I plan on sharing here. This is # 005-12

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