The paradox of a bad decision being good.
It’s seldom that I think Napoleon Hill is not quite right, but he mentions failures make decisions slowly, and change the results of that decision quickly. Of course, this is a logical inaccuracy, since if you’re changing your mind quickly, that’s inherently a decision. So someone can’t logically make a decision quickly AND slowly. What he’s likely saying is that someone will decide on something, like a college major, and take a long time to make that decision, and then second guess themselves and change their major. But that just means all their decisions are made quickly except for the first decision they make, which is still a bit of nonsense. Hill contrasts this with successful people making decisions quickly, and changing their mind slowly. Both of these statements are onto the value of assessing your decision making abilities as well as your ability to commit to that decision. But I would restate it to be a bit less rigid and more logical:
Make decisions quickly regarding trying to progress, and if that decision seems like a bad decision, then change your mind quickly and not let your ego get in the way. – Truth Cake.
It’s kind of like being on a grassy field, and you can’t figure out whether you’ll like playing soccer or football more.
Playing one or the other would be more enjoyable than playing nothing while you try to decide.
I can’t think of hardly any situations where someone in business said, “We really screwed up because we made decisions too quickly and executed without really thinking about every single permutation first.”
While some decisions made in haste end up being the wrong decision with negative consequences, the negative aspect of those consequences is most pronounced from NOT altering the course when it’s clearly a bad decision. This is in contrast to most of the negative aspects of a decision being from the decision itself.
If you think of getting married too quickly to the wrong person, most of the problem is from staying in the relationship as opposed to the negative aspects of the decision. And the negative aspects of not making a decision at all usually outweigh the negative aspects of making a bad decision.
Making the wrong decision to try to move forward is better than making no decision at all, as long as you’re adaptable to realizing that a decision may be wrong and should be changed.
What decision are you thinking about doing that you haven’t because you haven’t weighed all the options out yet? Would you be opening to altering your course if you realize it’s a bad decision, or will your ego get in the way of admitting it was the wrong choice?
