Aiding Personal Decision Making

Give yourself flexibility in making decisions, choices and taking action

On a Sunday afternoon, I was intrigued to write and share on one of the tools used by medical personnel to make some of the decisions about patients in non-emergency situations that are quite relevant in our daily decision-making situations.

It is the BRAIN tool. Let us examine what BRAIN tool means and how we can apply it in our personal life decision making situations.

BRAIN is an acronym for:

• •   B– Benefits
  •   R– Risks
  •  A– Alternatives
  •   I – Intuition or Implications
  •   N -Need Time or Do Nothing

Assume you are exploring whether to apply for early retirement, how would you use the BRAIN tool to aid your decision. Let us examine and relate the tool to each aspect of the decision we need to make about early retirement.

Benefits- what you will gain by taking on early retirement

• You can access your retirement benefits
• You will have time for your family and business
• For your good health reasons
• Opportunity to start a new career
• Flexibility in performance of your duties.

Find out whether the benefits are compelling enough to influence your decision.

Risks- the uncertainty about the effects of your intended action

• You may get bored and miss working
• It can be bad for your health
• You may not have enough income to sustain you
• You may not get the new opportunities you were targeting

Can these uncertainties be mitigated to your satisfaction?

Alternatives- a proposition of options to choose from

• You may need more time to prepare better
• Explore working from home
• Examine working part time
• Consider freelance work

Are the alternatives strongly convincing to guide your action?

Intuition or Implications- a change or consequence of a planned action

• Extra income may be hard to come by
• What is your margin of error in your projections
• You may need to make new friends
• You may spend more money than you had anticipated

You need to gauge your true feeling, make reflections and how strongly you feel about the implications.

Need Time or Nothing- No action or more time required

• Examine whether you need more time
• What happens if you do not take any action at all.

By examining these five aspects, you are in a position to make a decision, delay the decision or do nothing about it.

Key Lessons Learnt

The BRAIN tool is commonly used by medical personnel but has been adopted in personal decision making and in other decision-making fields.

The BRAIN tool focuses you to objectively and subjectively examine the issue at hand bringing out a broader view look on the subject matter.

There are other decision-making tools, do not restrict yourself to only this one to increase the quality of your personal decision capacity.

Remember to “Be clear about your goal but be flexible about the process of achieving it”—Brian Tracy and that “The person with the most flexibility has the best chance of achieving the outcome he or she desires–Tony Jeary.

For more information, you can contact our coaches or mentors on info@retirementlifehub.org