I have identified that the decisions we (humans) make can be categorized into three.
Simple/Trivial
Such as the following:
- Where/What should I eat?
- Where/What should I drink?
- What should I do this weekend?
These decisions have the following characteristics:
- They are short-term only.
- They are easily achieved.
- They require only a short portion of your time and energy.
Significant
Such as the following:
- What career/course should I pursue?
- What business should I invest into?
These decisions have the following characteristics:
- They are long-term.
- They are hard to achieve.
- They require a large portion of your time and energy.
- They require that you change your lifestyle.
Life-changing
Such as the following:
- Who should I marry?
These decisions have the following characteristics:
- They will last for the rest of your life.
- They require that you change your lifestyle.
This categorization was not based on the impact but rather on the reversibility of the decision. If you think deeper enough, you’ll find that all these decisions will affect different aspects of your life.
If you chose to eat unhealthy foods today, you can reverse the effect by simply opting to eat healthy foods next time until the effect of that unhealthy food wear off.
If you chose a wrong career/course. You wasted a lot of time, but then, you can simply opt for a career/course that pleases you most.
If you become alcoholic, your career will be affected and possibly your marriage and your relationship with other people. Even your behaviour and mindset will be affected, but you can always chose to stop when you realized the effect of that decision.
If you chose to marry the wrong person, well, that’s going to be hard to reverse. You can’t just simply leave your husband/wife simply because you regret your decision.
They are very simple, yet, they are very complex. The problem with simple things is that they are very obvious, and the complex things are not. This obviousness keeps us from seeing the complexity that’s underneath.
The realization that your decision can no longer be changed according to our preference would surely frustrate some of us, resulting to the worsening of one’s character and virtue.
Conclusion
A lot of people don’t usually care about these things but keeping them in mind would be a very big advantage. They can serve as a guiding principle. So that we may be able to make better decisions in the future. So that we may be able to redirect ourselves towards a better path, towards betterment.