Decision making is the cognitive process leading to the selection of a course of action among alternatives. Every decision making process produces a final choice. It can be an action or an opinion. It begins when we need to do something but we do not know what. Therefore, decision making is a reasoning process which can be rational or irrational, and can be based on explicit assumptions or tacit assumptions.

Some of the decision making techniques that we use in everyday life include:

  • listing the advantages and disadvantages of each option, popularized by Benjamin Franklin
  • flipping a coin, cutting a deck of playing cards, and other random or coincidence methods
  • accepting the first option that seems like it might achieve the desired result
  • prayer, tarot cards, astrology, augurs, revelation, or other forms of divination
  • acquiesce to a person in authority or an “expert”
  • Calculating the expected value or utility for each option. For example, a person is considering two jobs. At the first job option the person has a 60% chance of getting a 30% percent raise in the first year. And at the second job option the person has a 80% chance of getting a 10% raise in the first year. The decision maker would calculate the expected value of each option, calculating the probability multiplied by the increase of value. (0.60*0.30=0.18 [option a] 0.80*0.10=0.08 [option b]) The person deciding on the job would chose the option with the highest expected value, in this example option a.
The above information is taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/

Below are some of my comments.

Some of my friends take a long time to make a simply decision(example:stay at home or hang out with friends). Hope that they learn how to make their decision faster so that other people won’t have to wait for their decision for a long time.