Topic : Decision Making
Since the beginning of this year, my ability to make decisions has been severely affected. Earlier this year, I got involved in a construction project. I ended up putting around ₹10–12 lakh into it.
I was trying to build a fully furnished rented space for students in a Tier 3 place. I really thought there was an opportunity there, and just wanted to build something meaningful for students. But everyone around me, even people I love, discouraged me so much that at one point even I stopped believing in my own idea. Later around the same time, someone I know closely betrayed me. He made me purchase a land and cheated me for more than 3Lacs. It didn’t matter to me much that I lost the money, what affected me the most was essentially betrayal. I could accept making a bad financial decision. I rarely make decisions without doing proper market research, understanding the numbers, and talking to people around me. I’m usually quite deliberate about these things.
But this time, I thought, let’s trust someone.
And that trust is what ended up costing me. It was however, not the first time, that someone I knew had betrayed me, it has happened over and over last few years. But it’s always harder to accept that someone you knew and trusted had deliberately taken advantage of that trust.
And somewhere along the way, these experiences have started changing the way I make decisions lately. I feel so paralyzed every time I have to make a decision. Even choosing between what should eat for dinner and lunch sounds so daunting at times. I don’t know if its mid-life crisis that I’m suffering from or something else. But there’s something in me that’s changing. Often its the same feeling, as Eddie Brock had when venom was inside him. At times, I even often wonder, if my younger version was more wiser than the person I’m today.
Anyway, I’d moved quite far away from self-help books over the years. At some point, I felt I had graduated from them and moved on to what I considered more substantial books.
But lately, I find myself wanting to go back to them. Back to the books I used to read as a teenager, when I was still trying to understand myself, the world around me, and how to navigate life.
I did some research books to read on decision making. And here are some suggestions that appeared.
- The Confidence Gap — Russ Harris
- The Happiness Trap — Russ Harris
- Thinking in Bets — Annie Duke
- Four Thousand Weeks — Oliver Burkeman
- The Courage to Be Disliked — Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga
Also, check books on decision making
