Are you stuck in analysis paralysis while opportunities slip by? Making fast decisions isn’t reckless, it’s a strategic superpower. When you act, you uncover obstacles, gather real-world data, and iterate intelligently.
Over a year, making a decision every hour instead of once a day yields over 24× more outcomes, accelerating your learning and level of impact. Indecision drains energy and distracts attention. Waiting doesn’t neutralize worries, it delays progress.
In this blog, you’ll discover:
- why speed of decision‑making is the speed of life
- how it multiplies learning, confidence, and leadership,
- and how to avoid paralysis so you can move forward decisively.
Let’s Dive In
Why Fast Decisions are the Best Decisions
Fast decisions are a super power. Being able to take action allows you to move forward. Making a decision will help you find the obstacles of your path and get around them rather than trying to guess what the obstacles will be. The faster you decide, the faster you can go.
For example: Split yourself it two different timelines:
In one timeline, you can make a decision every day. In the other timeline, you can make a decision every hour.
Over the course of 1 year you’ll make 365 decisions in the first timeline, and 8,760 decisions in the other. 24X the decisions.
Not accounting for your skill increases but purely for decision time, that’s a 24X return on just making faster decisions. You’ll be moving 24X faster than before.
Unearth the Data You Need to Make a Quicker Decision
Almost all decisions you make in your life will need to be made with incomplete datasets. You’ll never know the “right answer” before you make the decision.
The goal should be to collect enough data that one decision makes more sense than the other and pick that path. Then, as you walk down that path you’ll be able to make an educated judgment about whether to continue moving forward or divert to the other path.
By making a decision and trying something, you can then gain the experience you need to make an informed decision on what to do next. Chances are, either decision will work.
There’s a lot of Right Decisions.
Oftentimes, decisions will not have one definite right answer. They will likely have varying degrees of success but both can get you where you want to go.
When you and your partner are hungry, it really doesn’t matter if you eat thai food or a burrito. Both will taste good and make you less hungry.
The only 100% wrong decision is to stay paralyzed by the decision. While you are sitting there going back and forth on the benefits and negatives of the two, you’re not spending time cleaning your house or making love 😉
The Cost of Indecision
Struggling with a decision can feel paralyzing and that’s exactly what it is.
When you’re paralyzed, life continues on around you whether you make the decision or not. That means minutes, days, months, years can go by while you still struggle to make a decision. Mark Twain captures this perfectly:
“I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”
Don’t wait your whole life because of worries that never happen.
Distraction lives in indecision.
Your awareness and time are some of the most valuable resources in your life. When you are ignoring a decision, it leads to distraction. Whether you start scrolling on your phone, watch a movie, or even just go for a walk, you’re ignoring what you need to do.
I first noticed this when I was starting my coaching business. Every time I made another decision: (Which logo do I like more, what’s my next blog post, which resources would help my client) I noticed I was finding ways to avoid it.
Don’t get me wrong, these distractions were productive in different ways. I would water the garden, clean the bathroom, and walk the dog. However, none of these things helped me push the business forward.
Procrastination is the result of unmade decisions. Whether you are unsure of what to do, how to do it, or can’t decide to sit down and do it. These slow decisions are where dreams go to die.
Learn how Indecision is Costing You: How Indecision Sneaks into your work
How does Life Change when you make Fast Decisions?
The speed of decision making is the speed of life. When you start making faster decisions, you give space for life to happen. No more distractions, no more waiting for someone else to decide for you, and no more paralysis.
Quick decisions are a simple way to upgrade your life.
Learning happens much faster
Learning happens faster when you make decisions.
Rather than spending weeks making a decision, make a fast decision and spend the week learning why it was the right or wrong decision. You will grow much faster than if you try to make the perfect decision.
No decision will feel perfect once you start actioning on the decision. There will be drawbacks, hiccups, and major challenges. However, the faster you can meet those challenges and overcome them, the better you become.
Confidence Grows behind Decisive Speed
Making fast decisions allows you to feel more confident in your decision making. Building up your ability to make speedy decisions makes you feel like you are in control of your life.
That controls compounds. You begin to build evidence that you are a decision maker. Next thing you know, decision making comes naturally. Complete thoughts, more action.
Confidence comes from building up an indisputable amount of evidence that you are what you say you are. The faster you make your decisions, the faster you build that evidence to become your best self. Others will see your growth and leadership.
You become a Stronger Leader
Leaders are tasked repeatedly with making decisions. Small decisions, large decisions, and everything in between. The best leaders are those that make the toughest decisions under the most pressure in the exact amount of time it should take.
By getting used to making decisions, you become more powerful. You stand a little bit taller, the room pulls toward you rather than feeling like you should sit in the corner.
“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”
Leaders throughout history have been known for their clear thinking and decisive nature. Taking action is the strongest indication of a good leader. Action is a result of a decision.
How to Make Fast Decisions that don’t come back to bite you
Being Clear on seeking the truth
When you make a decision, the goal should not be for your entire team to follow you blindly. It should be for your team to execute the decision so they can discover if it was correct.
As a leader you want to be clear upfront that you are making that decision but by no means does that make it right. The best leaders understand that they will make some wrong decisions, once it becomes clear, they pivot and take action to undo a bad decision.
Letting your team know that your decisions are not final makes things more clear. They can execute, knowing full well if they see problems then you are willing to hear them out and rectify as needed.
The best leaders know that it is more important to find the truth than it is to be right.
Is this Decision Irreversible?
Oftentimes when you make a decision, it can be reversed. There are very few decisions in life that are truly life or death.
Even quitting your job. Odds are you will find another position with a similar pay, similar management, and be able to pay your bills. Knowing that a decision will not make or break your entire life can give you the power to take something that appears risky.
Sometimes the most risky things you can do is not decide. 30 years go by and your no further along than you were before.
Push out your Time Horizon
We live in a world where instant gratification is the norm. You can open your phone and be on social media in seconds. Junk food is cheaper than healthy food. Turning on the TV is so much simpler than writing a blog.
Being able to delay gratification for a decision is how the best leaders win.
Say you decide that you want to sell a table that has been sitting in your basement for weeks. You put it on your favorite online marketplace and wait. Someone messages you and they decide not to buy it.
What do you do? Most of us go “oh well” and wait for the next person who wants to buy it.
But, for some reason this doesn’t translate into our working goals. We try a new marketing idea and it doesn’t work on the first email we send. Instead of continuing to do it, we decide that we should pivot and try something else.
Success takes time. Pushing out your time horizon allows for a decision to have the time to actually work.
Have the Right People in the Room
Decision making often comes down to this poorly defined word: Intuition.
We look up to those who make decisions as having this undeniable intuition, the ability to “feel” the right decision better than anyone else. This can be the case, however, picking the right intuitive perspective is important.
Intuition is the ability to take past experiences, learning, and use them to predict the outcomes of a future decision.
For example: If you’re the web designer for a fortune 500 company your intuition for “should we change our website or leave it alone” will be very strong. That same web designer would have a very weak intuition about which player to trade on your favorite sports team.
Having the right person in the room can make all the difference for those big decisions. (It also makes it really easy for your team to execute when their input is utilized).
Use these strategies to make better decisions: Why Decision making matter and how to make them better
How Coaching can Develop Faster Decision Making.
Coaching is designed to help you make faster decisions about your life. Whether big or small, a coach’s goal is to help you take action. That means making decisions and clearing a path for you to move forward.
Find a coach who can match your pace. Rather than slowing you down, they can help you pick up the speed.
The Forge focuses on moving you forward fast.
