41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Practical Ways to Make Better Decisions When It Counts, December 16, 2000
This review is from: What Do I Do Now?: Dr Fosters 30 Laws Of Great Decision Making (Hardcover)
Personal decision-making is something that few study, and even fewer work on to systematically improve upon their processes and practices. This book will allow anyone to become aware of weaknesses in their decision-making, and remedy those flaws. It will be especially valuable to those considering questions like who to marry and when, which career or job to choose, residential location, whether to have children or not, leaving a relationship, saving and investing money, handling health issues, assisting children with their problems, and the focus of your retirement.
Although I have had a great deal of formal decision-making training, I found that it did not cover many of the areas of advice here. So even if you think you know this subject, I suggest that you take a look at this book. Think of this book as a compendium of common sense that may not occur to you while you wrestle with an important decision.
Dr. Foster is a Ph.D. and M.B.A. so he has a sense of the theoretical as well as the practical. His 30 laws were divined through a 12 year study where the decisions of a few dozen people were tracked. Then the group was divided into two, based on the good or bad quality of the decisions. Those things more often done by the "good" decision makers became the basis of the laws.
Although the group is too small to be representative of the whole population, it is certainly an improvement over intuiting the ideas in the absence of any data. No data or analysis of these cases are provided, so you cannot see how strongly the observations held for yourself. That is the key limitation of the book, from my point of view.
I would normally be skeptical of such poorly documented advice, based on a "study" but the answers fit my intuition pretty well. So I am awarding five stars based on my personal reaction to the laws, rather than to the "study" itself.
In making a decision, you are encouraged to apply all 30 laws . . . not to look just for the laws that apply. You will find that some laws seem to conflict with others. I interpreted this as trying to help you acquire a more balanced perspective. Consider, for example, law #2 (Don't Decide Until You're Ready) which could come into conflict with law #4 (Choose It or Lose It) which points out that you cannot let too much time pass. In this case, the author suggests that the first 10 laws are in order of importance, and those that rank more highly should outweigh the lower ones. So you should take whatever time you need, keeping in mind that you don't want to let so much time pass that you make the decision through inaction. You'll just have to resolve these conflicts for yourself, as best you can. People will differ on how they do that.
Many such books are no more than a list of 30 laws, with some examples given. I was pleased to see that almost every law also had detail behind it that would help you apply that law properly. For example, law #7 (Turn Big Decisions into a Series of Little Decision Steps) contained information to help you identify smaller steps and to move expeditiously through them. Each law also had one or more interesting personal examples, presumably drawn from the "study" that led to the laws.
All of the laws fit into one of three principles:
"(1) Prudence is a virtue.
(2) Action is better than inaction.
(3) Decisions exist to make things wonderful."
Perhaps the best advice in the book is to "care about making a good choice." The book encourages you to proceed confidently. "Right now you have everything you need to make good decisions."
Here are some of my favorites among the laws:
"Focus on the Most Important Thing."
"Look for All the Good Things That Can Happen."
"You Always Have Better Options."
"Get What You Need To Feel Safe."
"Never Let a Lower Priority Outweigh a Higher Priority."
"Know Your Achilles' Heel."
"Make Yourself Proud."
"Know What's Real."
"Keep an Open Mind."
"Take Care of the Basics."
"Some of the Things You 'Know' Are Wrong."
"You Don't Have to Run from Risk."
For the most part, this book is so qualitative that it will not focus you enough for decisions that can benefit from calculations. I suggest you take a look at "Smart Choices" to get ideas for quantifying some of these important personal decisions. That book contains some excellent examples of how to do this for issues like selecting a residence.
After you have laid out your decision and come to a tentative conclusion, I suggest that you sleep on it before making your final step. Many times, I've found that a much improved thought emerges from the delay of one more night.
May your life be filled with great decisions!
I also suggest that you share this book with anyone you know who has difficulty with decisions. That approach can reduce the amount of problems you will have to help others resolve in the future.
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Worth the money, April 19, 2001
This review is from: What Do I Do Now?: Dr Fosters 30 Laws Of Great Decision Making (Hardcover)
Saw the book on the shelf and picked it up, glanced at the back and inside back cover and then a few chapters. I was hooked.
This is an excellent book for explaining why we make decisions and how we can learn to make better decisions and very timely here in the SF bay area of California where there are lay offs in high tech and people are trying to decide to stay in CA or move and all the other issues we deal with on a day to day basis.
The Chapters that are really helping me are Law#10 Do What You Really Want,#11 If It Ain't Simple, It Ain't Gonna Work, #12 Have a Hopeful heart and a Cautious Head, #28 You Don't Have to Run from Risk and #29 Following Through Makes Decisions Wonderful.
This is a GREAT book for those of us who are at a fork in the road and it looks like a real fork with 3-5 choices. Or those of us who feel like the rope in a tug a war game and are feeling the rope burn. This is why I got the book, because I needed some sound proven (important word) advise that would help be choose the right branch or path in the road and the right way to avoid more rope burn.
On page 111 he says "You don't just make a decision. You live a decision" which is wise advise. And that "You have to ask yourself what you would want if none of the people in your life were in the picture". In Chapter or Law 11 (excuse the bad English in the title. English teachers will wince) he asks "Are you making things more complicated than they need to be?"
The author Dr Charles Foster really knows, appreciates and practices the KISS mode of life. Keep It Simple Silly. Great book and well worth the money and time. And a book that you will actually use a great deal and should have on your book shelf. Buy a copy for your local library as well. Share the wisdom with others.
Every time I pick the book up and re-read it I learn something I had missed the times before. This is a sign that a book has WISDOM!
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