82% Sure: An Antidote to Analysis Paralysis

Hey Players,

Today I want to share with you one of my best tools for life decisions, for blasting procrastination, for deciding on the next step.

Seven springs ago, during a major life transition, I was crashing in Portland, unable to decide whether to move on to SoCal as planned, go back to NYC, or stay in my hometown of PDX. One night, my college buddy David dropped by with a Portland-themed bag of treats and a card that said he'd be glad if I stayed. 

Clearly artisanal chocolate is the key to persuasion, because I'm writing this seven years later from my Portland apartment. 

But the card was the real gift. It's been on my fridge ever since, in both Portland and while in Tulum.

The front has become a life lesson. It reads, simply, "82% sure."

As a professional game planner, the flipside of my strategic strength is that I often get stuck at the fork in the road when making decisions about my own life and business direction. I want the perfect Game Plan before I take action, but sometimes that simply isn't possible. That perfectionism causes procrastination, and by the time I decide - or it's too late - I could have tried multiple options to find out what works in reality.

So I'm working on letting 82% sure be enough of a prerequisite for action, especially in this pandemic season in which it still feels impossible to make long-term plans. 

Yes, some things require more than 82%. You might want to hit closer to 100 for major life decisions like buying a house, taking a job across the country, going back to school, getting married, having kids, face tattoos.

But if you're just stuck on the next step, or on short-term, reversible decisions, 82% is probably enough to move forward.

For more on this, I highly recommend the TED Talk and book by Barry Schwarz on The Paradox of Choice, and also Ruth Chang's reframe of Hard Choices being not wrong or right, but on a par.