I have often felt that life is all about making decisions – be it with regards to work, children, parents or society. Every decision taken by a person is the determinant of what he/she is likely to face in the future. The path on which a person walks is shaped by the various decisions taken by him. An appropriate and a wise decision could get person lots of goodwill and success while an inappropriate decision could lead to misery. So, it is extremely important for individuals to take appropriate decisions.
Now, at every point of life we take decisions - be it deciding about which clothes to wear for a birthday or buying/ renting a house or getting gifts for friends or choosing a stock in the market. Some decisions have a short-term impact on our life while other decisions have a long-term impact. Ideally, for a better life in future, the long-term impacting decisions need to be taken with more care and thought as compared to decisions which do not have such a long-term impact. These long term decisions should be taken considering all the pros and cons critically. So, the time required for a long-term impact decision should be more as compared to short-term impact. But does it actually happen?
Consider the following situations.
1. Gift to be bought for a friend for his birthday - We do a thorough review on his belongings and find out what he is in need of. In addition, we also keep an open ear for his desires so as to know what is he longing for and so on. I typically start thinking about the gift 1 week in advance before the present is to be gifted. A lot of consultations and discussions occur before arriving at the final decision. Thus, for deciding the time required to do a simple thing such as this, we take close to 7 days.
2. Campus recruitment - Typically, in an engineering college or a B-School, students are intimated about a company 1 or 2 days before the recruitment day. The ppt by the company happens just before the process of recruitment begins. We are left with no more than 30 minutes to decide whether we want to join the organization or not. The exact details like the location of job, the salary package and the exact work profile are told only during the ppt. While it is true that in the 1 or 2 days when we have been intimated about the company, we can do some research by asking peers, seniors, etc about the company, the exact details are only obtained only during the ppt. So, a decision has to be made considering the newly added parameters within 30 minutes or so.
Thus, for taking a decision for a job which could have a long term impact w.r.t career and future, we are left with less than 30 minutes while for a trivial matter like a gift, we get full week for decision. Such an irony.
Yet, another example where the irony is visible is the arrange marriage decision. We need to take a decision about our life partner in around 2 or 3 meetings and that too short duration meetings of 1 hour each or so. I mean such a major decision - marriage - has to be taken by meeting a person (with whom we wish to spend rest of our life) for a total of only 3 hours.
Thus, I conclude that the time given to take a decision is inversely dependent on the amount of the long-term impact the decision is going to make in one’s life. Greater the long-term impact of the decision, lesser is the time given to take the decision and vice versa.
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