Note: I’m think I remember a similar post to this one existing somewhere, but I can’t find it and I don’t think it was illustrated with The Good Place memes….so enjoy.
I respect how carefully the effective altruists around me try to use reason and logic to make good decisions. However, I sometimes see these people spending way too much effort to make careful decisions in situations where the outcome doesn’t matter.
You might not literally be destroying your life, but you’re probably flushing a good chunk of time down the toilet if you’re spending hours googling which lamp to buy.
You might spend time on a decision because you’re afraid of making a mistake or regretting your decision. Or you might not have considered the cost of your time – it can feel intuitive to keep researching until you’ve found the best decision, without noticing that the return on your time is miniscule.
Alternatively, you could just make the simpler decision and have all of that time back. Your time is probably incredibly valuable. Learning to respect that is a key productivity breakthrough to accomplishing more.
Caveats:
This advice is mainly aimed at people who have the privilege to value their time more than getting the best deal.
It’s even better advice for people who can absorb a mistake or two (like forgetting to mail back an Amazon return or giving away a new-but-ill-fitting shirt).
This advice is NOT aimed at people making important and hard decisions, like “what career should I pick?” These big questions can have huge differences in how impactful one decision vs the other is, so you often want to spend a good chunk of time making a careful decision.
Because some decisions matter and others don’t, I have a couple questions that help decide how important a decision is to get right:
1. Is the decision easily reversed or undone?
One heuristic I use: Can you replace it for less than thirty dollars in less than thirty minutes? (Or more precisely, can you replace/undo it for less than ½ as much as you value an hour, in less than thirty minutes?)
Examples: Amazon returns, buying a cheap replacement for a forgotten item while traveling, tickets with a flexible change policy.
If so, you shouldn’t spend more than half an hour total researching it. There’s a good chance you should spend much less time on it.
2. Are the options about equally good?
Is it difficult to decide because both options have pros and cons that about equally cancel each other out?
Then all the books in the world probably won’t substantially improve your decision – the options that are too similar to each other to matter. Just flip a coin and be done with it.
Caveat: can you get information that will tell you one is in fact better for substantially less than the difference in value between the options?
Spending hours researching your career decision = expensive time cost but big payoff for getting the better option -> totally worth it.
Spending ten minutes researching throw blankets = small time cost, small payoff -> probably fine.
Spending hours researching which throw blanket to buy = high cost, small payoff -> probably a waste of your valuable, limited time.
When faced with a situation where it genuinely doesn’t matter much which option you choose, consider flipping a coin or going with a fast recommendation (e.g. picking the top Wirecutter recommendation or first 4+ star Amazon review).
If you’re going back and forth on which takeout to get, just flip a forking coin and be done with it.