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Demo's Razor

Good Words: "Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide."

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 here)