Deciding on the options

Ihave a real curiosity about deciding and how people do it. Read my back articles on that here.

This morning I stumbled upon this article “How to Fail: 25 Secrets Learned Though Failure”  over at UnstructuredAdventures.com

It’s an interesting list of learning opportunities. But I was particularly attracted to this one:

2. Postpone hard decisions until you have to make hard trade-offs.
Instead: Make decisions earlier to create options and build flexibility.

Make decisions before you think you need to. You’re probably too late if you come to the point where you realize you have to make a choice between hard trade-offs. By waiting to make a decision you’ve created trade-offs instead of options. Postponing decisions in the attempt to optimize your results is probably a waste of your resources in other ways.

The longer you wait to make a decision… well, probably some of your options are gone. So your choices are automatically narrowed down. Sometimes that’s not a bad way to make a decision , especially if it’s not a big one. Show up at the movie theater at 7:30 and watch what ever starts next.  No real decision. Can you think of stuff you decide that way?

But what about when it does matter: either for business or fun?

Can’t decide on seeing Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band in Baltimore or David Bromberg in Reading?  Wait long enough and you’ll miss the first concert. The decision is made.  Wait a little longer and you don’t have to decide at all.  The decision is made for you.

Sure, that’s easy.  But do you get what you want out of it? Or is it just easy?  Was it fun? Or just easy?

And may I just say that I did NOT wait to buy my tickets to either show!

Rev. Peyton was a nonstop rush of music and stage presence. The albums are great but in person, they’re even better.  Breezy could be my new measure of stage presence. On his MySpace page one review says  Rev Peyton sounds like:

Robert Johnson on crack… they get one hell of a sound out of an acoustic guitar, washboard, and snare drum. It’s easy to see why they are big.”  according to Steve Hammer, in Nuvo Newsweekly

However, I probably did not need to buy my tickets two weeks in advance. The concert was, after all, on a Tuesday night and featured a rather obsure group. But I did not miss it!~

2 thoughts on “Deciding on the options

  1. Taylor Davidson

    I like your back articles on making decisions…

    It’s funny, this “lesson” is the one I go back and forth on. There are actually benefits towards delaying AND making earlier decisions, but I think overall we usually do a poor job of taking advantage of the benefits of delaying.

  2. kerch Post author

    Taylor
    Gotta say I agree with you regarding sometimes waiting to decide. I find it useful when there are too many choices AND when the outcome isn’t particularly important.

    It’s also fun sometimes to use the lack of choices to expand your creativity. HMM.. think I’ll write more about that.

    Thanks for the note. Keeps me thinking.

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