Theo Hartley — The Human PLAYBOOK
Overthinking & Decisions

Only after you decide can you know whether it was right

You think that only once you know whether it is right will you be able to decide.

And you are mistaken.

In practice it is the other way round:

only after you decide will you be able to know whether it is right.

Here are the places where that particular error of reasoning does you damage:

In your career. In your relationships. In your parenting. In your own development. And, in fact, in choosing dinner.

Now read the principle I wrote above once more. From the beginning to the end. Go on, it is not long.

The reason it holds is not mystical, and it is worth spelling out.

Almost every decision that matters changes the thing it is deciding about. A career is not a fixed object you are evaluating from outside; what it becomes depends substantially on whether you commit to it. The same is true of a relationship, of a house, of raising a child. The information you are waiting for does not exist yet, because you are the one who generates it.

Which means the waiting is not caution. It is a request that the world supply a guarantee it is not built to supply — and the price of the request is paid in years.

We beg for answers in advance. This business called life does not work that way.

Think. Think all the time. It may save you.

Just stop confusing thinking with waiting.