Some decisions announce themselves: You get two job offers to choose between. You’re deciding whether to apply to graduate school. Your manager offers you a promotion that would require a move. These decisions are hard to miss. There’s a deadline. There are pros and cons. You know you’re making a decision.
And because you recognize it as a decision that matters, you give it your attention.
But some of the decisions that shape your career don’t arrive looking nearly that important.
Someone catches you after a meeting and asks whether you’d take over a project nobody wants. You say yes because you’re standing in the hallway and saying yes is easier than asking for a day to think.
That decision took four seconds. You may not realize until much later how much it set in motion.
The problem isn’t just that we sometimes spend too much time on decisions that don’t deserve it.
It’s that we sometimes spend almost no time on decisions that do.
How important a decision feels isn’t always how important it is
We tend to recognize the big decisions because they feel big.
Two offers from similar companies, for similar money, in the same city can consume an entire weekend. You compare benefits. You talk to six people. You make a spreadsheet.
That’s probably worth doing.
But suppose you choose one and discover a year later that it wasn’t the right fit. You can look again. And this time, you’ll be looking with information you didn’t have before because you’ve actually done the job.
The choice mattered. But it wasn’t necessarily as permanent as it felt when you were making it.
Now compare that with the project you agreed to take on in the hallway. You barely thought about that decision at all. But saying yes may determine what you spend the next year working on, who sees your work, and what people begin to think you’re good at.
There was no offer letter. No application. No deadline on your calendar reminding you that A Decision Must Be Made.
And that’s precisely why it was so easy to miss.
Pay attention to what’s hard to undo
Instead of asking, “How big is this decision?” try asking a more useful question:
What would it take to undo it? Start there, then get more specific.
How would I undo this? Not could I. How would I? If you can describe the actual steps you’d take to change course, the decision may be more reversible than it feels. If you can’t, that tells you something too.
Can I change my mind on my own? There’s a difference between a choice you can reconsider next week and one that requires your manager to reopen a decision, a team to be restaffed, or an opportunity to be offered a second time.
What does being wrong actually cost? Be specific. Three months. A relationship with one person. Some credibility with one team. Having to restart a job search. Vague consequences have a way of becoming enormous in our heads. Naming them lets you see what you’re actually deciding.
What does this set in motion? This may be the question we ask least often. A choice can be relatively easy to reverse and still affect what experience you get, who you work near, what people associate you with, and which opportunities they think of you for later.
The decision part is over. Its effects aren’t.
Spend your attention where it matters
You only have so much time and attention to give every choice.
So the cost of overthinking one decision isn’t just the three hours you spent researching it. It’s also the attention you didn’t have available when something else came along.
And the cost of underthinking a decision can be bigger still.
That’s why the first step in making a decision is recognizing that you’re making one.
Before you give up a weekend agonizing over a choice, ask what it would actually take to change course.
And before you automatically say yes to something that seems too small to think about, ask what that yes might set in motion.
