Demo’s Razor
“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte
In my early 20s, I struggled with making decisions about my future — partly because I didn’t even know what I wanted to do.
It seemed like success boiled down to great decision-making, but what did that mean?
One day, at a private Q&A, I got to ask a successful recording engineer named “Demo” how he made decisions.
Since his job involved hundreds of subjective choices daily, I expected some type of sophisticated formula.
His answer stuck with me:
For most decisions, you’ll never have all the information, and you can’t predict the future perfectly.
But you can imagine two scenarios:
- What if everything goes wrong?
- What if everything goes right?
It will never be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope — it’ll land somewhere in between.
So, for those who overanalyze, here’s the truth: You’ll have to make a lot of decisions with incomplete information.
Instead:
- Anticipate the worst-case scenario.
- Optimize for the best-case scenario.
- Adjust as you go.
Anchoring from extremes creates perspective.
PS — how a sad mid-wit like me used to make decisions (click for meme)
