How to Decide

Any choice that you make has associated opportunity cost.

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.

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.

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.

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?”

“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.

Pretty much every decision is made with incomplete information.

If you could attain a state of perfect knowledge, is there something that would cause you to change your mind? If the answer is yes, ask yourself if that information is available, absent omniscience or psychic powers.