Comparing a situation with a room you may see many open doors but you don't know what will happen when you go through. Those doors may be labeled and colored in a very attracting way and you feel hard to choose.
What then happens often is that you want to just do a few steps through at least the most attracting doors, lurking at what is in there (for you). You want to keep the opportunity to take another door. When you look back in the room you were in, you want the other doors to be kept open.
But the truth is, that the doors are not static, they do open and close dynamically. Depending on the situations doors may open and close slower or faster. I do think for instance for business strategies doors are opening and closing in weekly or monthly rhythms while during an emergency in the hospital it might be seconds. So you are not in static rooms, you are on a dynamic journey hoping on and off trains or planes.
Once you decided hoping on a train it does not make sense to jump off in the wildness between two stations. And you cannot expect that returning to the last station you will find the same opportunities you faced before.
And you cannot tell what would have happened if you would have taken another door or train because situations change and you may never face the same set of opportunities again. On the other hand when you move on you might arrive at points where you also would have arrived taking other paths. However, you never can really be sure how it would have been taking other routes.
What to learn is:
- Evaluate the opportunities (have a look which doors are open) and take yourself the appropriate time (depending on the speed the doors are opening and closing).
- Take a decision
- Don't waste time in trying to figure out if it wouldn't have been better taking another door/train/route because you cannot reproduce older situations.
Choo choo trainRelated posts: Decision planning, Direction over goals, 2 major mistakes, Getting older.
Tuckin' down the track
Gotta travel on it
Never comin' back
...
4 comments:
Wow, this really got me thinking.
I believe, most of the times, it's more important to stick to the path we have chosen and make most of it than to choose the right path. All paths become "the" path for us, if we give our best to it.
"Sticking" to the path I would say sound a little "radical". If there are good reasons then it might be a better choice to get off the train at the next good opportunity. Which should not mean to switch to panic mode and jump of the rolling train. But apart from that you are right.
Further we often do not consciously evaluate and choose the direction and so we are not sure if we took the right path. If you have taken a decision "officially" with fundamental evaluation then not every news do create doubts. Doubts that are irrelevant either because you can't really prove after you already moved further.
Related I like the phrase 'last responsible moment' in regards to making decisions. The longer you can delay a decision the more information you will have. However the trap not to fall into is to forget when the 'responsible moment' passes and you should have 'taken a decision'.
You are right - the longer you wait, the more time to collect information. Often people do not take time to collect the information when is still enough time and then they have to decide in a hurry.
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