|
Hey Legend, There is a room in your mind you never clean. You walk past it every morning. You know it’s there. You can feel the weight of it. From that room there’s a sound… barely audible. A low, constant hum. You hear it behind every conversation, every meeting, every quiet moment where your brain should be resting but isn’t… Because that door is always left slightly open. And inside there’s a pile of things that keeps you from entering that room. Not of things you’ve done wrong. Not of failures or mistakes, but something worse. Decisions you’ve yet to make. Each one looks so small and inconsequential. An email you’ll answer tomorrow. Alone, they’re nothing. But here’s what nobody tells you about decisions… they’re not neutral. They’re not out of sight, out of mind. Decisions are a tax. And unlike every other tax in your life, you can’t see what they’re costing you. There’s no invoice. No line item. No quarterly reminder. They just quietly compound until one day you realize a brutal truth of life: The most expensive decisions are the ones you refused to make. Because those indecisions whisper to each other at 2am, they’re an open loop constantly gnawing at the back of your mind keeping you from living fully in the moment, and they’re eroding your identity as being someone capable of moving through life with conviction. And every single day you refuse to enter that room, clean the pile, and pay down your indecision tax, the bigger the bill grows. Here’s why this hits harder than you think. In 1927, psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik noticed something strange about waiters. They could remember incredibly complex orders (dozens of items, modifications, table numbers) with near-perfect accuracy. But the moment the food was delivered? Gone. Couldn’t recall a single dish Her research uncovered something your entrepreneurial brain desperately needs to hear: your mind treats every unfinished task as an open loop. And it will keep that loop running in the background (burning energy, eating focus, pulling your attention sideways) until it’s closed. Not “thought about.” Closed. Resolved. Decided. This is why you sit down to do deep work and your brain feels like it’s running through mud. It’s not that you’re lazy. It’s not that you lack discipline. It’s that you have 15 background apps running and every single one of them is an unmade decision. That hire you’ve been “mulling over” for six weeks? Open loop. Your brain doesn’t process these in isolation. It processes them simultaneously. All day. Every day. Including the days you think you’re not thinking about them. Each open loop, by itself, is barely a blip. But stack fifteen of them? Twenty? You’re not running your business on a full engine anymore. You’re running it on whatever’s left after your brain finishes servicing a queue of decisions you keep refusing to make. That’s the real tax. Not just lost time. Lost horsepower. So here’s the fix (and it’s deceptively simple): Every decision you’re sitting on falls into one of two categories: 1. Reversible. You can undo it.
2. Irreversible. You genuinely cannot undo it.
For irreversible decisions… take your time. Get counsel. Sleep on it. Run the numbers twice. These deserve the weight you’re giving them. Also, watch this video on how to make better & difficult decisions (without overthinking). But for reversible decisions? Your new rule is sixty seconds. I’m serious. Sixty seconds. Because here’s the thing you already know but keep pretending you don’t: you’ve already decided. You actually decided the first time you thought about it. You’re not gathering more information. You’re avoiding the discomfort of commitment. And the brutal math is this: the cost of making the wrong call on a reversible decision is almost nothing, because you just… reverse it. The cost of making no call? That compounds. Every. Single. Day. Now here’s the part that should make you uncomfortable. I’d bet real money that ninety percent of the decisions currently in that room (the ones piling up, the ones humming at 2am, the ones running as open loops in your background) are reversible. You’re applying irreversible-level caution to a pile of things you could undo by Thursday. So here’s what I want you to do. Not tomorrow. Right now. Think of three decisions you’ve been sitting on. I already know you can name them without trying. They’ve been humming in that room for weeks. Maybe months. Got them? Great, now ask the question: Are any of them actually irreversible? Almost certainly not. So make all three. This week. Don’t schedule a meeting about it. You’ve slept on it enough. The answer hasn’t changed since the first time you thought about it, and it won’t change tomorrow. Decide. Move forward. Adjust later if you need to. Because that pile almost never shrinks on its own. (and for the record, NOT making a decision is still a decision and absolutely one of the worst ways to make a decision) You actually have to go in there and deal with the mess. And here’s something I really need you to hear… Every day you refuse to deal with that mess, you’re not just losing time, energy, or money. You’re reinforcing a version of yourself that hesitates. That waits. That’s always “about to do” something but never quite does. But the flip side is also true. Every fast, clean decision on a reversible call trains you to be someone who moves. Who trusts their judgment. Who values progress over perfection. The entrepreneurs I know who’ve built the most successful enterprises aren’t smarter than you…They’re faster. So ask yourself this morning… What are all those unmade decisions really costing you… and is that really a price you’re willing to pay? Stay Hyperfocused, My Friend. P.S. for the irreversible decisions, here’s the Decision Journal I use to make the big calls in life. It’s one of a dozen frameworks I teach the founders in the Escape Velocity Accelerator for paying down Decision Debt fast. Enjoy! P.P.S. stuck on a particularly tricky decision? reply to this email with what you’re dealing with and let’s see how I can help. |
