Making decisions

Decisions, decisions, decisions. How do you make yours?
I spent an evening talking to Leeds University science undergraduates about how the skills I learnt at Leeds have helped me succeed in the work place.
As much as I thought my stories and advice sounded great, the students all wanted help in making decisions.
What should they do?

Academia or industry?
Business start up or grad scheme?
Ideal job or perfect partner?

My advice was firstly around looking inwards, at themselves and understand what is important to them. Values. Describing what is important [contextualised according to the decision, most were 'in the work place'] helps set the tiller in the right direction.

Then, I established their decision making strategy and replayed it to check I ha it nailed.  The look from the students that said something like "how have you seen into my brain to know how I decide" indicated I was on the right lines. 

We discussed the type of evidence they needed to search for.  I suggested, to get the evidence they needed,  they consider possible things to do, resources to use and people to involve.  With the results of their research, I proposed they consciously plug it back into their decision strategies and compare the strength of feeling to help them decide.

Will all this work? I will keep tabs on feedback through the careers office...