How to Make Better Decisions, Faster

Contemplation and reflection are important, but nothing ever gets done until you actually get started. In business (and in life), a bias toward action is important. 

That’s why Jeff Bezos thinks most decisions should be made when you don’t have all the information you wish you had. As Bezos says:

Many decisions are reversible, two-way doors. Those decisions can use a light-weight process. Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70 percent of the information you wish you had.

Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible — one-way doors — and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before.

But most decisions aren’t like that — they are changeable, reversible — they’re two-way doors. If you’ve made a suboptimal two-way door decision, you don’t have to live with the consequences for that long. You can reopen the door and go back through. 

He’s right. Most decisions are reversible. But some aren’t.

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Read the whole story (subscription may be required): Inc.