How to Decide

When asking yourself “What’s the worst that could happen?” make sure you follow up by examining the effects of making the same type of decision repeatedly. That’s how you recognize that a free donut is not a freeroll.

When a decision is hard, that means it’s easy The very thing that slows you down—having multiple options that are very close in quality—is actually a signal that you can go fast, because this tells you that whichever option you choose, you can’t possibly be that wrong, since both options have similar upside and downside potential.

Because we all live in the space between no information and perfect information, it’s not realistic to think that you will be able to discern which option is better.

You’re chasing an illusory certainty by taking all that extra time.

That would mean that you’re spending all that time to try to resolve a .2% difference between the two options.

THE ONLY-OPTION TEST For any options you’re considering, ask yourself, “If this were the only option I had, would I be happy with it?”

The Menu Strategy This strategy for choosing what to order from a menu can be broadly applied to decision-making in general. For any decision, spend your time sorting the world into stuff you like and stuff you don’t like. After that, go fast.

Any choice that you make has associated opportunity cost. When you choose an option, you’re also rejecting other options, along with the upside potential of those things you chose not to do. The greater the gains associated with the options you don’t pick, the higher the opportunity cost. The higher the opportunity cost, the greater the penalty for going fast.

opportunity cost should be a factor in how you manage the time-accuracy trade-off.

“If I pick this option, what’s the cost of quitting?”

QUIT-TO-ITIVENESS The lower the cost to quit, the faster you can go, because it’s easier to unwind the decision and choose a different option, including options you may have rejected in the past.

Being quit-to-itive improves decision quality.

Decisions where the cost to quit is manageable also give you an opportunity to gather information through innovation and experimentation

It’s hard to succeed at anything if you don’t have grit and stick-to-itiveness.

DECISION STACKING Finding ways to make low-impact, easy-to-quit decisions in advance of a high-impact, harder-to-quit decision.

You want to balance what you’re gaining by doing multiple things at once with what you’re losing in money, time, and other resources

When should you stop analyzing and just decide?

If your goal is to get to certainty about your choice, you’ll never be finished. Chasing certainty causes analysis paralysis.

includes asking yourself a final question: “Is there information that I could find out that would change my mind?”

continue your search? Pretty much every decision is made with incomplete information.