Avoid analysis paralysis. Don’t let an insatiable appetite for more, better data prevent you from making decisions at all.
We’ve made it folks; we now live in the era of big data. But is smart technology making us dumb? It’s a question that many smart people have asked and discussed at length.
Analysis paralysis is an easy trap to fall into anytime there’s uncertainty, especially when (1) there is lots of available information; (2) there are lots of choices; and/or (3) the decision will have lasting consequences.
Cutting-edge neuroscience shows that your brain isn’t built for thinking—it’s made to predict your reality, and you have more power over that perception than you might think.
From the moment you’re born to the moment you draw your last breath, your brain is stuck in a dark, silent box called your skull. Day in and day out, it continually receives sense data from the outside world via your eyes, ears, nose, and other sensory organs. This data does not arrive in the form of the meaningful sights, smells, sounds, and other sensations that most of us experience. It’s just a barrage of light waves, chemicals, and changes in air pressure with no inherent significance.
Faced with these ambiguous scraps of sense data, your brain must somehow figure out what to do next. Your brain’s most important job is to control your body so you stay alive and well.
How does your brain decipher the sense data so it knows how to proceed? Your brain asks itself in every moment, figuratively speaking, The last time I encountered a similar situation when my body was in a similar state, what did I do next?
Your brain can draw on your lifetime of past experiences—things that have happened to you personally and things that you’ve learned about from friends, teachers, books, videos, and other sources. In the blink of an eye, your brain reconstructs bits and pieces of past experience as your neurons pass electrochemical information back and forth in an ever-shifting, complex network. Your brain assembles these bits into memories to infer the meaning of the sense data and guess what to do about it. Your past experiences include not only what happened in the world around you but also what happened inside your body. Your brain asks itself in every moment, figuratively speaking, The last time I encountered a similar situation when my body was in a similar state, what did I do next? The answer need not be a perfect match for your situation, just something close enough to give your brain an appropriate plan of action that helps you survive and even thrive.
The French mathematician and writer Blaise Pascal once wrote: “Clarity of mind is clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.” It is an attractive equation. How convenient would it be if by simply assessing pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses, we could rationally steer inclination, transform chaos into order? However, rationality, or excessive calculation, can do more harm than good in certain realms of life.
We cannot predict our feelings based on analysis. Equally, we cannot forecast romantic outcomes. Some factors in a decision will always remain hidden from conscious reasoning. In other words, reasoning may stifle emotion and thus not expose our truest intentions, resulting in poor choices.
Analysis paralysis is an easy trap to fall into any time there’s uncertainty, especially when (1) there is lots of available information; (2) there are lots of choices; and/or (3) the decision will have lasting consequences.
We get it — we know that for important decisions, you only get one (or few) chance/s, and the consequences are enormous. Unfortunately, the consequences of inaction are even bigger. There will always be more data and information to collect. But more data doesn’t guarantee you’ll reach “perfect” information or identify the “right” course of action. Doing something is almost always better than doing nothing.
At a certain point, you must stop collecting and start acting.
When facing the uncertainty that comes with big problems and processes, it’s tempting to focus on collecting (and analyzing) more and more information. Doing so makes it easy to trick yourself, and others, into thinking you’re making progress. But remember, action — not information — determines progress.
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