Break the Routine -- Be Deliberate

Many of us go through our everyday lives like the shampoo mantra -- "rinse and repeat." Our lives go on autopilot and are dictated not by deliberate actions, but by short-term tradeoffs based on the immediate pressures we face. More often than not, we make decisions based on short-term thinking -- whether it's (A) deciding between having dinner with a significant other vs. completing a "major" project, (B) choosing to stay in an unsatisfying job vs. taking the risk of a new career, (C) going back to school vs. chasing after your dreams, (D) accepting your weaknesses vs. seeking to improve. We put greater emphasis on the immediate benefits (or losses) and less on the long-term impact of those decisions. Blowing off dinner with a significant other may seem less consequential in the present day than not meeting the client's deadline (a potential immediate firing), but the long-term consequences of these repeated decisions are often unaccounted for -- until it's too late. More fundamentally, we have a bias for the present and for the immediate payoffs. Why is that? My hypothesis is that many of us are low on EQ...continue reading at Huffington Post