Decision-making, like much of life, requires solving puzzles with multiple options, imagining future possibilities and evaluating potential impacts.

This Robbie Gonzalez article suggests 4 distinct steps for logical puzzle solving:
Understand the problem, Assumptions, Devising a Plan of Attack, and Aftermath.

Read Solving This Puzzle Will Help You Grasp the True Nature of Puzzles

Identify your personal or career puzzle and then list answers for each of the following questions:

1. Understand the problem

What is the unknown?
What are the data?
What is the condition?
Can the problem be solved?

2. Assumptions

What can you or need you assume?
What shouldn’t you assume?
Have you made subconscious assumptions?

3. Devising a plan of attack

Have you seen this or a related problem before?
Have you seen a similar unknown before?
Can you restate the problem?
If you can’t solve this problem, can you solve a similar or simpler problem?

4. Aftermath

Are you sure of the solution? Can you see it at a glance?
Did you use all the data? The whole condition?
Can you get the same solution another way?
Are there other valid solutions?
Can you apply the solution or method to another problem?
Was this a satisfying problem to solve?