The depressing truth is that the overwhelming majority of us simply avoid making decisions.
We run away from it.
Say we are risk-averse, say we are lovers of routine, say whatever you like — but hand on heart: when did you last make more than three significant decisions in a month? Decisions that change direction, that give up an existing route and move onto an alternative one?
And do not fob me off. A decision to buy five things online is not a decision. It is a continuation of an entirely routine consumption habit. Nor is a decision to telephone an old friend something to congratulate yourself over. It is no more than a pleasant one-off impulse.
A committed, significant, complete decision is the product of a clear internal commitment to fight the monster of uncertainty. The product of a burning willingness to return control to your own life.
Because there is something fundamental most of us miss about the relationship between decisions and uncertainty.
Most people believe they will be able to make decisions properly only once uncertainty has disappeared from their lives.
In fact the opposite is true.
Because uncertainty will never disappear from our lives, we are obliged to make decisions.
Read that twice, because it inverts the thing you have been doing. You have not been waiting for more information. You have been waiting for a feeling of sufficiency that no quantity of information produces, because the feeling was never a function of the information.
Which means the skill is not better analysis. It is the ability to act while the discomfort of not knowing is still fully present — and that is a tolerance, built by repetition, not a conclusion you can reason your way into.