Problem Solving: Go Fastttt

Thinking is expensive. It costs time, energy, stress and potential opportunity. We spend all this time in deliberation in the hopes of just a little bit more accuracy. What if that extra bit of accuracy isn't worth it? 

Look at the flip side, taking action. Action is vital because action leads to experiences and experiences contain the most useful and practical information. Which guess what, helps you make better decisions in the future.  

This isn't an excuse to forego any thinking and make snap decisions though. When done properly there is a synergy that exists between analysis and action. Your analysis leads to better paths, taking those paths (action/experience) leads to better data which in turn helps your analysis and so on. 

For example say you wanted to hire a virtual assistant,  you can spend 100s of hours on the problem if you wanted. Analyzing whether it’s worth the investment, comparing the sites, perfecting the ad you post, responding to and reading the reviews of everyone that replied, reading the do's and don'ts of the hiring process. Orrrrr you can pick the 1st site you go on, post your job, look at the 1st 3 people who responded for a couple minutes then choose. 

The latter strategy not only saves time, energy and stress but you will learn a lot more about how worthwhile the investment is, the hiring process and your exact needs if you actually you know.... have a virtual assistant work for you. The decision, like most decisions is reversible as well. You can easily hire a different VA if this one didn't work out. The impact of a bad decision is minimal, worst case scenario you spent $50 on a bad hire and gained valuable information in the process. 

Decisions with high levels of reversibility should be made more quickly (in general) then decisions with low levels or non existent. For example marriage or buying a house. Most decisions fall into the high level of reversibility category though. Another huge factor is impact, the less damaging a bad decision can be the more quickly you should make your decisions. For example deciding what to eat, deciding what part of poker to study today, what to wear, making a blog post, a video.

Most decisions have a much smaller impact than you think they do. Every bad decision gives you a chance to reflect on your mistakes and if you can do this correctly you will get better. If you can't unbiasedly judge what's happening and just blame others you will never become a great decision maker. 

What you want to avoid in your decision making is being paralyzed, overwhelmed, or stressed because of the volume and/or difficulty of the analysis. Quickly making high impact, not easily reversible decisions with minimal knowledge and experience. 

I believe that most decisions should be made quicker than we actually make them. Because most decisions are of low to medium impact and are often easily reversible. You must be willing to dive in and adjust as you go. It's difficult to take action without certainty but accuracy (and speed) is the luxury and privilege of those who have experience and wisdom. Which you don't get without moving fast (when necessary). 

Have a decision you're making? Analyze how impactful a bad decision would be, how reversible it would be, and how much knowledge and experience you have. Unless it's all of the above: high impact, low irreversibility, low knowledge and experience make your decision quickly and then reflect and learn. 

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