How to use decision filters to prioritize your life.

In good company.

TJA has the good fortune to welcome inspirational individuals into our fold. They share their hard-won knowledge so we can benefit from their expertise. During our most recent quarterly huddle, the whole company came together to review our wins and strategize for the upcoming months. Speaker and entrepreneur extraordinaire, Russ Perry of Design Pickle, was invited to give us the low down on an indispensable tool for prioritizing our objectives: decision filters. His insight resonated with our firmly-held beliefs about establishing boundaries, maintaining personal integrity and setting goals. If those are values you want to integrate more into your personal and professional life, read on.

Shiny object syndrome.

Decision making is unavoidable, especially when there’s a never-ending torrent of content, opportunities, challenges, to-do lists, obligations and indecisions. How much energy do you spend deciding what to do before you even begin a task? Does it add up? Does it weigh down on you? When your options are seemingly infinite, and the people, places and things demanding your attention are endless, you are forced to streamline and prioritize. It’s time to break the chains of shiny object syndrome.

Decision fatigue.

Decision fatigue is real, y’all. The more you invest in making decisions, the more energy your body consumes, the more depleted you are at the end of the day. The real kicker is that longer sessions of decision making actually result in deteriorating quality of judgment. Here’s the science to prove it. Feel free to use this rationale next time you’re trying to get out of a long meeting, but don’t blame it on us if it backfires. Knowing that our attention is a precious resource that gets spent, how can we be more selective with what we dedicate our energy to? 

Use a filter.

Time to dig deep. The concept of a decision filter relies entirely on what you value in your life. If you’re looking at your aspirations from 30,000 feet, and are thinking about your long-term goals and overarching ambitions, what matters most to you? Where do you want to go? We broke the categories into personal and professional, but you could have a set of decision filters for any area of your life—family, finances, relationships, etc. The point of adding this tool to your cognitive arsenal is to increase your certainty in each move you make. With certainty, you can make decisions faster and trust their outcomes, which brings you closer to your dreams in a shorter period of time. Sounds like a good deal, no?

Make it personal.

Once you’ve done the soul searching and come up with your top priorities, apply your filter throughout the day. If one of your top values is to travel more, take a moment before each task and hold it up to your filter. Will spending the time, money or energy on this particular activity bring you closer to taking a remarkable trip? If your main ambition is to build your own business, will the conversations you’re having and people you surround yourself with help you get there? It’s impossible to live your whole life according to your filter, but one of the most useful traits of employing a decision filter is that it shows you how often you’re acting for (or against) your best interest. That knowledge in and of itself can encourage corrective habits to get you closer to your goals.

Scale it up.

Decision filters can go beyond the individual. We have agency-wide filters that keep us honed in on our objectives and keep us from straying from our purpose. Through clearly written mission and vision statements, the entire agency knows what matters, and every decision—whether it’s acquiring new clients or taking on new talent—is measured against our values. This sometimes means turning down enticing opportunities. It’s hard to rebel against shiny object syndrome, especially when it comes in the form of a promising prospect. Through experience, we’ve learned that even the best-looking possibilities can work against our best interests. Every organization stands to benefit from aligning their team over the goals and values that pave the path toward success. Here are a few of our filters to inspire you and prompt you to create some of your own:

  • Comparing potential clients and partners to our core values and making sure they walk our walk
  • Holding fast and steady to who we are and who we aren’t to vet team members
  • Ensuring there’s a “why” for every “what” to help us keep on the correct path as we grow as a business

 

Energy and attention are resources you can’t afford to waste, so utilize your decision filters wisely to achieve the goals you set for yourself. If your organization is looking to have a deeper discussion about how to accelerate toward its aspirations, we’d love to learn more about what your organizational filters are and how we can apply them to creative marketing endeavors.

Let’s strategize >

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