Making decisions

How do you make your decisions? Do you go off the whim of one or the other? Do you do what "feels" right? Do you analyze each decision? Do you make a pros and cons list? Do you talk to trusted people? Do you sleep on a decision? Do you research your decision? Do you discuss it? Do you one or more of the above?

Brandon and I had a conversation about making decisions the other day. And by conversation, I mean I overloaded his brain with my thoughts on making decisions. My thought process went something like this: every decision we make from creating a new business, to decorating the house, to parenting the kids, needs to be talked over, mulled over, analyzed, and brought to a conclusion. A culmination of analyzation talking to people we know, research, and discussion. The thought of this totally overwhelmed him and left him in instant stress mode thinking about having to do that for every little thing we do. I didn't mean every little thing we do, but I did mean a lot of the bigger decisions. But now the thought stresses me out since it stresses him out.

Ideally, I would love to go through this process when making a decision:

*Idea process: come up with an idea, be supportive of it, brainstorm, and be open to anything

*Develops ideas: think about possible ways to make each idea realistic, coming up with only the positive at this point

*Research ideas: Now to the nitty-gritty, what will it take to make it possible in our realm of possibility within capability of skills, money, know-how, time, energy, and passion.

*Decision: Based on what we researched, do we want to extend the energy needed on our parts on that particular decision?

*Follow-thru: Now that we've brainstormed the ideas, done the research, and made the decision, the follow-thru is the easy part, but it has to be done.

So often I feel like we go straight from the first point to the last, skipping all the parts in between, and making the last step so hard to follow it rarely does get followed. This is overwhelming to me. Taking this process is the steps I take for decisions personally, whether it be concsiously or subconsciously, and the steps I would like to take together as a couple.

What process do you follow in making decisions with yourself and/or your significant other? Do you have a process?