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> Finally, do your best to avoid situations where a "quick decision" is needed; this is good advice even for "quick thinkers". Fast decisions are often poor one

> Finally, do your best to avoid situations where a "quick decision" is needed; this is good advice even for "quick thinkers". Fast decisions are often poor ones - the counterpoint to that is dragging something out over many weeks or across many meetings - but putting yourself in a situation where the unknowns become knowns or the scope of the landscape and weight of the decision can be properly assessed is important. What's better is that you will likely be able to have a better paper trail for this. If you have to make a 'quick decision', one of the pieces of advice I've heard is to try to make the smallest possible good decision that will move the ball forward. Often getting started is enough to provide more information needed to make a better long term decision, but making the best possible, smallest decision will rarely get you into trouble.

gopher2000 3y ago
It's a fair point but I'd caution that making the "smallest possible good decision" really needs emphasis on good and not smallest or this results in just delaying. And there's a ton of people that cause delays. Especially in the corporate world.
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  I think delaying is the point. You delay the “immediateness” so you can form a nuanced opinion without urgency. I know we can’t always change the world we live in, but we can at least acknowledge it. In the corporate world people really like to pretend there is a fire, when few things are truly urgent. If you can keep the sky from falling down with a quick and small scoped decision, you free up time to make big and long term decisions slowly.
saltcured 3y ago
This seems like it is tapping into the same risk management strategy as in Agile methods? Essentially allowing for more frequent course correction. I assume "small" here blurs together cost and latency . The tradeoff of this kind of incremental planning and execution is that it becomes more reactive and myopic. You can end up stuck at a local maxima or worse, just executing a random walk. I think a large part of becoming "quick" in an effective way is to improve your triage skills. This is a meta-decision process where you quickly estimate the time-dependent risks and priorities.
u32480932048 3y ago
> making the best possible, smallest decision will rarely get you into trouble It's like gradient descent for humans
- zarathustreal 3y ago
  It also potentially traps you in a local maximum
creer 3y ago
Wonder if you really "have to" make that decision "now". Sometimes you may have to get the ball rolling because of time constraints there specifically but the decision itself can wait. For example it might be fine to get funds moving so they are ready, even if the later decision means they are not needed anymore.

gopher2000 3y ago

It's a fair point but I'd caution that making the "smallest possible good decision" really needs emphasis on good and not smallest or this results in just delaying. And there's a ton of people that cause delays. Especially in the corporate world.

vineyardmike 3y ago
I think delaying is the point. You delay the “immediateness” so you can form a nuanced opinion without urgency. I know we can’t always change the world we live in, but we can at least acknowledge it. In the corporate world people really like to pretend there is a fire, when few things are truly urgent. If you can keep the sky from falling down with a quick and small scoped decision, you free up time to make big and long term decisions slowly.

saltcured 3y ago

This seems like it is tapping into the same risk management strategy as in Agile methods? Essentially allowing for more frequent course correction. I assume "small" here blurs together cost and latency . The tradeoff of this kind of incremental planning and execution is that it becomes more reactive and myopic. You can end up stuck at a local maxima or worse, just executing a random walk. I think a large part of becoming "quick" in an effective way is to improve your triage skills. This is a meta-decision process where you quickly estimate the time-dependent risks and priorities.

u32480932048 3y ago

> making the best possible, smallest decision will rarely get you into trouble It's like gradient descent for humans

zarathustreal 3y ago
It also potentially traps you in a local maximum

creer 3y ago

Wonder if you really "have to" make that decision "now". Sometimes you may have to get the ball rolling because of time constraints there specifically but the decision itself can wait. For example it might be fine to get funds moving so they are ready, even if the later decision means they are not needed anymore.