Making a Decision
Making informed and thoughtful decisions allows your career to develop in the direction you want.
People make decisions in different ways. For some,decision-making is a very personal process that revolves around their feelings, insights, "gut" reactions and values.
For others, are driven by what seems valid, realistic or makes sense. They will want to organize ideas, make connections, and classify and categorize information.
Regardless of our preference, we all use a combination of thoughts and feelings when we make decisions. The following exercises will help you make a choice that is appeals to your rational and emotional sides.
Online Exercises
With these exercises, you'll compare the options you've chosen and see which one best meets your criteria for a satisfying career.
Exercises
Pros and Cons Method
Consider all the information you have gathered about your options and yourself:
- Write down all the reasons you can think of in favour of a particular option (pro).
- Write down all the reasons against that option (con).
- Assign a score to each reason (pro and con) on a scale of 1 - 5, with 5 being the strongest.
- Add up the scores and compare the results.
If the cons win, make a list of alternatives to the decision. One of those may jump out as the preferred option. Otherwise, you can then repeat the exercise for each alternative.
The "What If…" Approach
Imagine that you have decided on an option. Work through the option (e.g. "What if I decided to do post-graduate study?"), imagine you have taken that decision, and imagine the consequences. How do you feel? Are you excited, relieved, regretful, happy, sad? Is your body tense, relaxed? You could rank each response on a 1 - 5 scale to indicate how significant they are to you. Our feelings can give us strong clues about which decision is right for us.
Creative Decision-making
A career is an evolving process. Becoming too focused on a particular decision early on can prevent you from seeing other possibilities. Being flexible and learning to live with uncertainty, on the hand, are valuable skills. An open approach encourages you to accept that uncertainty is real and a positive part of decision-making.
A way to use this approach is to divide a sheet of paper into four quarters with headings Short Term Positive, Short Term Negative, Long Term Positive and Long Term Negative. For each option you are considering write down all the possible outcomes you can think of under each heading, however unlikely they may be. Then ask yourself "'What else could I do and what else could happen?".
Workshops
"Making Sense of the Career Decision-making Process". This workshop, offered by UNB Career Counselling Services, helps you integrate all your information and guides you through the decision-making process towards the career at the end of the tunnel.
