Optimal Thinking

What is Optimal Thinking?

Optimal thinking is the process of making the best decision possible for the circumstance you are currently in. Often when we make decisions, it's decided in an instance, we don't generally spend half a minute or more debating with ourselves what we're going to do. As a result, we don't always make the right decisions, although for a lot of decisions it's a given what we should do. We have the power to either make an optimal decision or a suboptimal decision.
Making bad decisions is easily done, and I would go even to far as to say that we make at least


one bad decision every day. Let me explain what I mean by this before I carry on. When I'm discussing making a bad decision, I'm not only talking about decisions that have negative impact on us or others, but about good decisions as-well, to a certain extent. Now this may sound confusing, as surely a good decision is a good decision and not a bad decision. Well, this is both true and untrue. In general these decisions would be good, however when applying optimal thinking to ourselves, then they're not good. Optimal thinking is about making the best decision in your circumstance, not making a good one. So by making a good decision when there is a better one, now makes that first decision the wrong decision to go with, in turn making it a bad decision. Remember this is in the terms of optimal thinking. 


So when applying optimal thinking to our lives, you're really thinking as such: how can I make the best decision (x), to obtain the best possible outcome (y)? You may be thinking already that this is just common sense and that it's already something that applies to your life. But is it? Your first reaction will be yes as we all have some idea of what the outcome is going to be or how our decision will affect the outcome. 
This though, is when we confuse good decisions with the best decisions. Good decisions (which ironically are bad decisions) are things you can come to in an instance without too much effort put into it, the best decisions however, are not so easily thought of. I'm not saying that you can't make the best decision in an instance, but I am saying that it's easier to make that good decision in that time-frame rather than the best one. 
And whilst this may seem like an easy thing to do, you'll soon find with some decisions that it's not as easy as it first sounds. 

If you aren't a very decisive person though and are wanting to become more decisive so you can then better apply optimal thinking to yourself, then here's a previous post of mine: How to Become more Decisive.


What does optimal thinking apply to?

Optimal thinking isn't just something that pertains to decisions involving productivity or effectiveness around a task, but can apply to anything and everything. For example: interactions and communications with people, daily chores and jobs, career and work, life decisions etc.. 

Questions that should often be asked when trying to make an optimal decisions are; What is the best use of my time, what is the best thing I can say in response to this person, is there a better decision to make than the one that I'm about to make. There are more, but I'm sure that you get the idea to what optimal thinking involves and what it applies to.


Conclusion


The main point of optimal thinking is not to get you to spend more time thinking, but to get you to raise the bar in terms of decision-making. Yes raising the bar/standards will maybe cause you to take a longer time to make a decision, however it will be the best decision and so will be worth it, which is the overall purpose.