A lack of decisiveness can be the main source of procrastination for anyone. If it takes you 1 hour to make every decision then you have just wasted one hour of your life. The most productive people in the world will make a decision in a flash and get working on it. If you are not decisive then you are not going to be getting much work done.

If you cannot make decisions that you are happy with fast enough then it is impossible for you to be truly successful. Richard Branson is one of the richest men in the world and owns the virgin group, the virgin group has 400 companies. He doesn’t spend an hour making every decision, if he did he wouldn’t even have one successful company.

Indecisive people never install confidence in anyone, you must have experienced it when a co-worker takes ages to make a simple decision. This person is not decisive and they do not know what they are doing. If you want to lead people effectively you cannot let them doubt your effectiveness, you need to be the first to make the right decision.

How To Become Decisive

1. Don’t hesitate just do. How many times have you been tempted to do something and then dropped out at the last-minute? This is the worst thing you can do for your productivity, if your constantly changing your mind you will never do anything. So next time you feel an urge to do something don’t just stick it on a to do list, don’t give yourself a chance to change your mind, just go and do the thing straight away.

2. Don’t over analyse the decision. You will never be able to predict the outcome of any decision so stop trying, it just wastes time. Sometimes it’s good to go into a decision with a bit of ignorance, it can be exciting. It gives you he chance to learn as you go along which can be the most effective form of learning.

3. Set yourself a time constraint. Wake up in the morning and say to yourself: ‘today no decision is going to take longer than 1 minute’. You will find that your productivity goes through the roof, you may not aways make the right decision but neither do successful people. Mistakes are good for you, successful people don’t make the right decision; they make their decision right.

4. Embrace making the wrong decisions. As soon as you can get over the fear of making the wrong decision you will become decisive. Fear is the root of indecisiveness, fear of unknown consequences. The only way that you will get over that is by making the wrong decisions, you will soon realise the consequences aren’t as bad as you may think. That is when talking about every day decisions not life and death, that could have pretty dire consequences.

5. Practice, practice. As you know practice makes perfect, so the more decisions that you make the faster you will get. Try to get faster at making decisions every day and before long you will be great at it.