Decisions for Living
Strategies for Making Smart Decisions Throughout Life
Encouraging realistic, sensible thinking about decision-making, Decisions for Living is an illustrative self-help book.
Gopal Dorai’s self-help book Decisions for Living scrutinizes choice-selection processes on subjects ranging from menu items to theater seats and finances with the goal of improving results.
Across seven chapters, the book dissects the anatomy of decisions. Individual sections focus on the building blocks that drive people’s decisions, as with an illuminating examination of people’s beliefs and habits. Throughout, the book works to raise awareness about the sometimes unconscious experiences that influence people’s choice processes, including the fear of failure, procrastination, and misplaced trust. The book even reframes poor choices as opportunities to learn from one’s mistakes. Its cost-benefit analyses are clear, and its last chapter summarizes the preceding content in a question-and-answer format for direct applicability.
While the book’s invitation to explore its succinct points before delving into deeper discussions of them makes its structure unregimented, its inclusion of sobering statistics in chapters about poor habits related to health issues, exercise, and smoking ground its more conceptual sections well, helping make certain points actionable. Its lists and questions also distill its points well, encouraging realistic, sensible thinking about decision-making. Of particular use are a list about identifying the gaps in one’s decision-making and questions to improve one’s performance, both of which name action steps and take a rational approach to pinpointing the issues that impede positive results.
Tables and figures are used to illustrate certain points, as where the “legs” of decision-making are illustrated on the image of a sturdy stool, and with an image encapsulating the choice process that functions like an exclamation mark at the book’s end. Examples and case studies also pack the book, though, appearing in unwieldy numbers in its later chapters. Some of these include details concerning college applications, career choices, savings plans, mortgage options, and retirement funds. While they illustrate some central themes well, their excessive volume dulls their cumulative strength. Discursions also hamper the book’s progression, as with a long discussion about eagles being masters of decision-making that is not made to fit with the subsequent discussion of conflicts. Awkward language also disrupts the book’s flow, and the included quotes, as with one about “a bird in hand,” are too familiar to be inspiring.
An observant self-help book, Decisions for Living is about making rational choices, overcoming obstacles, and increasing the chances of reaching one’s goals through careful planning and implementation.
Reviewed by
Andrea Hammer
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
