Why This Matters
Indecision is often worse than a wrong decision. The inability to choose leads to missed opportunities, frustrated teams, and stalled projects. Great decision-makers are not always right, but they know how to make good choices with incomplete information, move forward confidently, and adjust course when needed.
Key Principles
- 1.Reversible vs Irreversible Decisions
Jeff Bezos calls these Type 1 and Type 2 decisions. Type 2 (reversible) decisions should be made quickly with 70% of the information you wish you had. Type 1 (irreversible) decisions deserve careful analysis. Most decisions are Type 2.
- 2.The Decision Matrix
List your options as rows and your criteria as columns. Score each option against each criterion. Weight the criteria by importance. This makes trade-offs visible and decisions more objective.
- 3.Pre-Mortem: Imagine Failure
Before committing, imagine the decision failed spectacularly. Why did it fail? This surfaces risks you might have glossed over in your enthusiasm and helps you prepare contingency plans.
- 4.The 10/10/10 Rule
How will you feel about this decision 10 minutes from now? 10 months from now? 10 years from now? This framework helps distinguish short-term discomfort from long-term regret.
- 5.Know When to Trust Your Gut
Intuition is powerful when you have deep experience in a domain. A firefighter's gut feeling is trained by thousands of fires. In unfamiliar territory, rely more on frameworks and data.
Practice with AI
Use these prompts with ChatGPT, Claude, or any AI assistant to practice this skill:
Practice Prompt:
"I'm trying to decide between [Option A] and [Option B]. Help me build a decision matrix. What criteria should I consider? After I score them, help me interpret the results and check my reasoning."
Get Feedback:
"Run a pre-mortem on this decision I'm about to make: [describe decision]. Imagine it's one year later and things went badly wrong. What are the most likely reasons it failed? What should I do now to prevent those failures?"
Key Insight
"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing."
— Theodore Roosevelt
Books to Explore
- • Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
- • Decisive by Chip & Dan Heath
- • Sources of Power by Gary Klein (on intuition)