SEL I: Decision-Making

Which of the following is NOT a reason why it’s important to examine your own decisions?

• Your decisions have intended and unintended consequences that affect both you and others

• The decisions you make play a large role in shaping the course of your life

• Even if you keep making the same bad decision, it’s okay— as long as you examine it and use it as an opportunity to grow

• Making big decisions can be scary, so it’s important to examine your decisions and use specific strategies to improve your decision-making

Which of the following is FALSE about how your habits affect your decision-making?

• When you have a bad habit, you might unconsciously make repeated bad decisions, as if you’re on auto-pilot

• Building good habits helps you reduce the number of decisions you have to make, which helps you avoid decision fatigue

• When you have a bad habit, you are more likely to encounter decision-making obstacles that lead to poor decisions

• When you have good habits, decision-making obstacles no longer have an effect on your choices

Whenever Jasmine gets bored or frustrated while doing her schoolwork, she has a habit of reaching for her phone without even thinking about it—and this is starting to affect her grades. Which of the following decision-making strategies is BEST suited to help Jasmine overcome this habitual bad decision?

• Jasmine can use a decision-making framework, like a daily planner or calendar, so that she can schedule time for focusing on her homework

• Jasmine can build a good homework routine by leaving her phone in another room before she begins working

• Jasmine can mind her energy levels to improve her frame of mind, so that she can stop feeling so frustrated with her schoolwork

• Thinking critically in order to realize that reaching for her phone is a bad decision

Match the following

• being tired from making too many choices

• Decision Fatigue

• Things that make it hard to choose

• Decision-Making Obstacles

• you think you know more than you do

• Overconfidence

• struggling to make a decision

• Indecisiveness

• too little information to make a choice

• Insufficient Information

Match the following

• Use evidence, data, and logic to choose

• Thinking Critically

• frozen, overwhelmed, and can't choose

• Analysis Paralysis

• a series of bad decisions in a row

• Decision-Making Frameworks

• Techniques to help make better decisions

• Decision Snowballs

• Tools or systems to simplify decisions

• Decision-Making Strategies