Make tiny decisions

The fear of making the wrong decision can be paralyzing. It’s often what causes people and projects to stagnate. Everyone is afraid of making that big wrong decision. That’s how mediocrity creeps in.

Instead of making a few big decisions, make a bunch of tiny decisions. Make your decisions small enough that they’re effectively temporary. Making a bunch of small decisions lowers your cost of change. Being able to afford the change when you need to make a change is invaluable.

The bigger the decision the more costly that decision. The more costly that decision the less likely you’ll change it in the future if it’s proven out to be the wrong decision. When you have too much invested in any one decision you’re unlikely to be objective about when you most need to be. That’s dangerous.

So try to shatter that big decision into a bunch of tiny ones. If you make a wrong big decision today it’s likely you’ll be living with it for a long time. If you make a wrong tiny decision today it’s no big deal to make the right tiny decision tomorrow.

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