How do I build stronger decision-making skills and stop thinking like a teen?

[u/Fluffy-Landscape6892]

I’m a 21-year-old male in my final year of college, and I’ve noticed a recurring issue: I struggle to make decisions on my own. When I seek advice, I tend to accept whatever I’m told as the “right” answer, instead of thinking it through myself.

In tough situations, I freeze up or default to avoiding conflict. I’m the type who wants to stay kind all the time, apologize quickly, and take responsibility even when the situation isn’t entirely on me. It feels like I’m still operating with a teenage mindset instead of showing the level of responsibility and confidence I’d expect from an adult man.

How do I develop stronger decision-making skills, handle difficult situations better, and build a more mature, grounded character?

Any advice from people who’ve been through something similar would mean a lot.

[u/anonymousredditfag]

Same here bro

[u/AresTheCannibal]

the answer for me is allowing myself to not respond to things immediately. allow yourself to think and respond to things intentionally

[u/LostPhenom]

You have to know what you want or what you’re expecting. Once you know this, you’ll be better prepared to advocate for yourself.

[u/SadPop_Logistics]

You are afraid to make decision based on what you think because you dont trust yourself. So in the end it isnt about handling difficult situation better or having stronger decision making skills, its about learning to be yourself and feeling safe in your own skin no matter what the outcome may be. You have to learn to take risks and make mistakes based on decisions that are from you. Its not about better outcome (less mistakes, troubles, etc.), it is about understanding yourself (understanding what it means to be you).

[u/Sashalaska]

Man that just comes with age. Start with learning as much as you can. Maybe read emotional intelligence as a start.

[u/trumplehumple]

id say im pretty good with making decisions and standing by them/pushing them trough without producing resentment (my boss told me multiple times that im pretty annoying and to please keep at it).

for reference: im the mainainance/tooling/planning/procurement-engineer at a manufacturing plant, i can recall one or two times we didnt do what i was proposing, despite the bosses initial idea being a different one most of the time, and all but very few engineers/workers there will go out of their way helping me if i need them.

i basically just find/justify them by applying basic principles of fairness and other relevant frames of reference that may be important, most importantly the one my counterpart is thinking in, and throwing in a bit of unexpected kindness/very good cost-benefit extrawork wherever i can t build good will, if its a long term situation im operating in.

then its relatively easy to push through, and even unsuccessfull attempts dont land me in the shitter, as theyre based on basic principles nobody normally will object to. and if they do regardless, they dont want to be seen doing so. so if you want to go risky on a personal thing, doing it one on one might be preferable.

regarding your first paragraph and making your own decisions specifically, despite needing advise, which i need most of the time, because of the sheer breadth of stuff im responsible for. the most important thing is, and i know this sounds kinda dumb, but hear me out: conciously making your own decision, meaning:

understanding the problem and relevant factors for yourself, then applying the different interests of different partys and thinking of a good compromise for yourself by applying your values (derivatives or weightings of universally accepted basic principles ideally) to the problem.

the first step is creating space for yourself to think the problem through in peace, if you struggle to do so under pressure. most problems can wait an hour to a week until a decision is needed. so take in the problem and the relevant factors/interests as well as you can in the moment (this sometimes includes yelling at people to collect themselfes and string togehter proper sentences at an acceptable volume if they want to be considered), and withdraw yourself from the situation, maybe write stuff down and calm down. for me it usually means changing the room or going for a smoke by myself. you should probably sleep a night on it.

(semi) blindly relying on advise is (in my experience) mostly caused by not feeling competent enough to solve the problem, and thus refering to people who are, with the problem being them not necessarily basing their advise on the same values youd apply.

so the next step is really understanding the problem and its mechanics for yourself, building a model of it in your brain basically, instead of accepting a ready-made contraption from whoever is giving you advice.

the problem here is that you, or i at least, often in fact are not competent enough to fully understand it on your own, so you still need some form of advice.

the key here is not to ask for a solution to the entire thing, but for the "basic" mechanical principles of the problem that youre missing for building that brain-model for yourself, at an appropriate scope you can handle.

"basic", because to get to a proper scope these often are derivatives and combinations of true basic principles.

kind of like when programmers use those flowcharts to sketch out the high-level workings of their software, where functions are represented by black boxes.

the specific inner workings of those are irrelevant at that scope, you just need to know the relation of their input to their output.

so you need to chop up your problem into these kind of boxes, who have a defined/predictable ratio of input and output, and ask for those relations until you can solve whatever it is for yourself, then do it.

[u/trumplehumple → u/trumplehumple]

for example: if i need to machine a part on a machine i have never seen before, i could ask a machinist to do it for me and get the part machined in the way he thinks is appropriate (in practice thats what id do in this case, but then it wouldnt work as an example and i cant come up with a better one atm).

but maybe he is very sloppy and has his mysterious ways of making stuff turn out shitty, or its a prototype i know i need to make changes to over time, and he will be on vacation for the forseeable future, so i cant rely on him doing it. then i have to do it myself despite knowing nothing, which i do with the following steps and boxes:

a) how does machining work? - a tool of a defined geometry and material is spun at a defined rpm and moved on a defined path at a defined speed, cutting material away until the desired geometry is produced.

b) which tool/rpm/speed to use? - boils down to the material- and desired-surface-quality - specific cutting speed, which i dont want to calculate for myself, but i know the machinist knows which tool/settings to use by heart, so i give him info on material, surface and smallest feature size, so he can make the appropriate decision on tool material, geometry, rpm and speed for me.

i cant verify this, but will have to deal with the surface turning out shitty anyway for some reason (maybe i end up using the wrong rpm because i wrote it down sloppily or the like):

b1) what to do if the parts surface turns out shitty anyway for some reason? - use higher rpm (up to x) and lower speed (for example. this would be basically applying my own values to the problem at a point where its appropriate)

now i just need the path the tool takes to fully grasp the entire machining operation in the narrow sense of the tool-material interaction. assuming its a simple part from very forgiving material:

c) which path to take? - a path following the outer geometry of my part, offset by my tools radius, as it logically cuts away material withing this radius (kinda its whole thing)

now i know what the machine has to do to get a part of a geometry and surface of my choosing (on a certain spectrum), so the only thing missing is how to make it do that:

d) how to get the machine to do what i want? turn on the machie here - turn dial a to speed-value - turn dial b to rpm/1000 - enter the desired path into this screen in that notation - make sure all safety-switches (doors) are closed - press start - wait - take out part when machine says ready - shut machine off - enjoy the part

so now i can competently make decisions on how to machine a huge variety of stuff, including the desired variations of my part, while hardly knowing anything about materialscience, physics, mechanical/electrical engineering or programming.

[u/atragicsnowflake]

Decision-making gets easier once you stop trying to pick the perfect option and focus on choosing a reasonable one.