> It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt.” In the case of thinking in the moment, if I don’t have something cog

> It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt.” In the case of thinking in the moment, if I don’t have something cogent to add, I say as little as possible. Many people know this yet still fail to do it. I am much the same although I was not always. I used to jump in first with a quick and usually basic comment. Now I listen and think of multiple responses before I open my mouth. Is it maturity? Wisdom I have picked up over the past two decades? Perhaps my brain is just a slower with age? I don’t know but I certainly feel less pressure to answer first these days. If someone comes to me first for comment I will almost always answer with “I will need to think about that a bit more and get back to you”. I’ve had a few people give me unsolicited feedback that I don’t “engage” enough (what they mean here is fast enough). To which I just say it is far easier to start correctly a bit later than start sooner and make mistakes. Undoing mistakes, in my experience, takes far more time than starting a little later. This is especially true in design, development and management. Sometimes undoing mistakes is not possible without throwing all previous work out and starting over. That to me is far more frustrating and wasteful than taking a little time before you start to give yourself the best possible platform from which to begin.