Not making a decision is still a decision
Are you standing on the line, looking in? Lurking. Stuck. Overwhelmed. And just not sure about what to do next?
Perhaps it feels good to just hold out on making decisions. Maybe delaying them, or even just ignoring them completely...perhaps forever?
There is always so much to consider when pushing forward with your indie business. It's overwhelming and paralyzing. And more often than not we will feel that the decisions we make are just not going to be good enough.
Here's some indie Friday food for thought. 🍲
You may feel safe by not making a decision. Or choosing to put something off for that bit longer. You'll continue to exist in the safety of whatever your bubble is right now, but remember that no decision is still a decision. There are consequences of not making that decision.
This is not pressure to act on FOMO. Peer pressure or to be constantly hustling. That's not my rosie style.
This is more about being aware and conscious of all your actions. Sometimes we feel that by not making a decision we are freeing ourselves from the responsibilities.
- Not acting on something you want to pursue
- Feeling unsure about exactly what to do next
- Not reaching out to that person
- Not asking for help
- Not attending that meetup
- Not writing that tweet
- Not deciding on a name or a domain
- Not putting together a MVP
- etc...
Not making a decision is still a decision.
By all means, feel free to say not today, but when you do, think about what this decision means for you.
Maybe it is better to move forward with the understanding you'll never make perfect decisions. The goal should be to avoid making really bad ones.
That sounds like a Rush song. :-)
"If you choose not to decide
You still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears
And kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that’s clear
I will choose free will."
Haha love it!
Interesting post @rosiesherry. Is there a decision-making method that you use for tough choices?
Still in progress, @maevaeverywhere if you want to try it: https://www.ode.systems/decide-to-be-happy
Hey, what a cool idea! I´ll check it out 😁
Amen. Not making a decision in poker means you fold and lose =D. I think that's very much the same way in life!
Ha! Good one! But not exactly. Not playing a hand doesn't mean losing if winning the hand isn't your goal.
Sometimes you need to sit things out in order to be able to act later.
It's only an issue when you can't afford to sit out because your stack size gets smaller and smaller.
YES, @rosiesherry, it does need decision-making skills to set the wheels of fate in motion. Sensible decisions can take us step-by-step to where we want to have ourselves, our business, and society. Less good decisions mean psychological stress and losses.
That is why we are working on ODE.
We discovered the pain points of GenZ and Millennials and aim to bring relief.
100%. The most successful investors pass 99 times out of 100. Investment portfolio construction can be a useful analogy for product and growth decisions just the same... saying no means that feature/channel/tactic/whatever doesn't become a part of your portfolio, which frees up your resource to "seek alpha" with your time/money resources elsewhere.
I agree with this 100%
It's definitely a decision, though not always a bad decision.
I recently came to the realization that procrastination is sometimes my best friend - particularly when it's met with a deadline.
I think choosing to make non urgent decisions later gives you the time to gather more information and process things a bit more. And thankfully, I also don't have a habit of second guessing decisions that I made because I think that something that's already happened has happened. I can only learn from it and move forward. So delaying decisions has always worked out pretty well for me.
The challenge though has been not having deadlines for when I need to make decisions by. And that's where what you wrote wrings true for me.
It's too easy to say "not today" when the due date isn't staring you in the face.
True.
I read the awesome Obamas in there… great post @rosiesherry!
Yes. 🤗
Inspired by Barack Obama on Brené Brown's podcast.
There's an interesting thread from Daniel Kahneman's interview with Shane Parrish where he talks about the difference in Obama's decision making vs. George W. Bush's...
The short of it is that Obama deliberated more, whereas Bush acted more on impulse. Kahneman explains that scientifically, deliberation (and "the Obama method") wins... but he was a less popular president because of it... in a popularity contest—and this applies to decision-making within organizations as well—deliberation is perceived as hesitation and weakness, whereas fast + confident decisions breed confidence from the public (or "less enlightened" colleagues at work).