Decision Time: How to Make the Choices Your Life Depends On

Should I change careers? Is it time to end my relationship? Can I move halfway across the world?

We have to make choices everyday, big and small, but it's the life-changing ones that often cause us to freeze or react too quickly, without thinking. What can we do differently?

Laurence Alison and Neil Shortland have spent over 20 years helping soldiers, police officers, doctors and other professionals in high-stakes environments make tough decisions when lives are on the line. In Decision Time, they show us how those same decision-making techniques apply to everyday life, whether that's deciding to take a new job or change career later in life, end a relationship, move across the world or declaring your undying love for your best friend.

With tips, studies, interviews and observations from their training with police officers together with role-play scenarios for you to try, this book will help you identify and fight off the common enemies of good decision-making - inertia, procrastination and indecision - and empower you to make the choices that matter the most.

Highly accessible and interactive, Decision Time will guide you through each step of the decision-making process so next time you a find yourself at the crossroads, you'll be able to make your way with confidence.

A highly readable and entertaining book... The authors have managed the trick of applying their work with military and security professionals to the high-consequence choices people face in everyday life. This is a thought-provoking and stimulating contribution. ― Gary Klein, author of Seeing What Others Don't and The Power of Intuition

Laurence Alison is the author of Rapport, professor of psychology at the University of Liverpool and the Director of Ground Truth. He has an international reputation and is widely published in relation to his work on decision-making in high-stake environments, interviewing and interrogation, as well as prioritisation and detection of sex offenders. In 2021 he was awarded an MBE in the Queen's New Year's Honours list for his work on high-risk decision-making.

Dr Neil Shortland is a world expert on military decision making. He's worked with The Ministry of Defence (MoD), the United States Department for Defence and National Institute for Justice. He has also served as an international expert on security and expert witness on Supreme Court cases involving decision making.