Most people seem to fall into one of two extremes when it comes to making choices. The first group never thinks about them and just does whatever comes their way (or even worse, they do what they think others expect them to do). The second group thinks endlessly about them and they ‘research’ forever and thus are paralyzed because they’re waiting for the ‘best’ decision.

Luckily there’s a third choice. Not as popular, but infinitely more productive. Where  you spend a short while on ‘research’ then make a decision based on whatever info you have.

Because the best decision you can make, is often the fastest one.

Actions always speak louder than words.

In the end, when you look back on life, you’ll reflect on the choices you made, not on the discussions you had about those choices. You won’t judge yourself and be proud that you took 2 years to come up with a decision.

Those same 2 years could’ve been put into trying out those choices instead of simply thinking about them.

Thinking about it for a long time probably won’t improve your decision.

In economics you call it decreasing utility. It means that as you spend more and go higher up the expensive scale, the returns you get become less and less per dollar. Example, spending 200 bucks on a phone gets you a phone. Add 200 more? The phone will be 3 times better. Add 200 more? It’ll only be twice better. Keep doing this and you’ll realize later that even adding 200 bucks more won’t improve the phone by any noticable amount.

In the same way, spending more time will not improve your decision much. Spending half an hour thinking on a problem will probably give you 90% of the choices you have. You’ll probably even know what you should do by the end of it. Or maybe it’s a decision that needs a few days of thought, where you need to also ask friends and family. That’s fine. Spending 3 weeks on it probably won’t improve the decision you will make. It might even make you more confused as you over-analyze it.

Spending 2 years? It’ll probably just destroy your self-esteem as someone who can’t even make up your mind. And you’ll never make a decision. So it’s a guarantee that you’re not making the ‘best’ decision.  As they say, “you can’t win unless you play the game“.

But most people never actually think about their futures?

You’ll probably misunderstand when I say this, because generally people DO think about their futures. In fact, a lot of people can’t stop thinking about it. But they only really worry about it. They don’t sit and think about what they really want in their futures, they only follow what society expects them to do and think about how to achieve what society wants from them.

Maybe my vision of life on earth is different from others but I can’t imagine having a job that eats up my nights and weekends, or to live in a house that’s so big that I never get to see my own kids, or to work in a place half an hour away (and that’s without traffic thankyouverymuch), or to be in debt (while the bank is charging interest!), or to while away my life listening to the latest and greatest tunes “because they describe my life so very well!”, or to follow the lives of such strangers on tv that you don’t follow the lives of your own friends and family, or to update my Facebook statuses and my Twitter in the hope somebody will notice me and retweet. But ohmygod, don’t you know it, I’ve just described 95% of the population.

And if I ask where they want to be 20 years from now, they don’t have an answer to give. After thinking a little, they’ll tell you that they want to be a manager, or earn 10 thousand a month. They never say that they want to be the best dad in the world.

It’s almost as if they don’t know what they will want in the future.

Do YOU know what you want in your future?

But once you know what you want, you’ll often have to make a choice on what to do to get there. And life unfortunately offers many choices. Which choice do you take?

I read once before (I forget who wrote it) that when you have a few business ideas in mind, you should always start with the one that fails the fastest. Time is money. Time is the resource that is most precious to you. So if the chances of them succeeding are all decent, choose the one which will fail the fastest. If it succeeds, all is well. But if it fails, at least it will fail fast and you can quickly move on to the next thing.

Faster! Faster!

You never want to try something that is slow in failing. Imagine trying something out where it will take you 5 years to see the result. What if it fails then? 5 years wasted. And if you had another business where you could see the results in 4 months instead? It would’ve failed and you could’ve moved on to the next thing.

I figure life choices can be made the same way. If you’re trying to figure out a new direction in life and you have the choice between an 18 month management program and a 3 month introductory course to PhotoShop skills, it’s probably better to take the 3 month course. If it’s bad for you, you’ve only lost 3 months instead of 18.

I guess that in the end it just means that if you have to make a mistake, start with the mistakes that aren’t so expensive. And expense is measured in terms of time.

So in the end there are two aspects to making fast decisions:

  • Don’t spend too much time making decisions. Often you’ll know what to do in the first 5 minutes anyway. It’s just about whether you can bring yourself to do it.

  • When torn between 2 decisions (because you’re not psychic and can’t predict what will happen in the future), choose the one that will fail the fastest.