We are all prone to impulsiveness at different times. Sometimes that can lead to one hell of a fun ride and other times it can lead to regret.
For a no regrets lifestyle we need to work with our tendency for impulsiveness. In Daniel Kahnemann’s book Thinking Fast and Slow he gives more than forty heuristics, where we take mental shortcuts to make a quicker decision. (Erik Johnson has a nice summary of each of them here). Kahnemann explains how each of these are by no means fool proof and suggests that we need to identify the times when we should slow down our thinking to check if the heuristic in play is valid in each case.
Risk assessment is one form of thinking slow. Taking the time to deliberate possible outcomes and their likelihood of occurrence. However, not everything needs a risk assessment. Hence, I came up with my own decision model that can be applied rapidly to any decision. I call it the MCI Decision Model.
My model checks if you have gone straight to Implementation mode without the Clarification that comes from developing and comparing a suite of options and confirms if your Motivation behind your decision is creating positive or negative blockers to your decision making.
