It is generally good to give your decisions a good deal of thought. However, it is entirely possible that you spend too much time thinking about decisions and not enough time taking the actual action.

In decision theory, there is a principle called “analysis paralysis”: over-analyzing or over-thinking a situation so that action is never taken. I found that I get much more stuff done when I continuously reevaluate if it is possible to make a decision with the information I currently have, instead of making another round of the options and possibilities and getting another person’s opinion to feel a little bit safer.

The take-away of this post is that with a little conscious thought, you’ll be able to detect when you’re wasting time debating and researching a decision (and when it is really valuable as well!). Generally, when the next steps are easily reversible, you could pick any solid option. In this case, taking a couple of seconds to see if you should continue on this path could save you hours or days of valuable time. And you’ll probably learn faster too.

It might be really worthwhile as an experiment as well: when you’re in a difficult situation and can’t seem to make a decision, just pick the first option and go with it.