Steal my “Decide Once” rule.
ISSUE #012
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Have you ever stood in the cereal aisle long enough that choosing breakfast starts to feel like a major life decision?
Granola. Flakes. Clusters. High protein. Low sugar. Organic. Frosted. Something involving an ancient grain you’re fairly certain nobody asked for. Eventually, I grab something because I’m officially done caring.
Work can feel exactly like that. Except instead of cereal, you’re deciding which project needs attention, whether this needs a meeting, when to follow up, who should own something, how to word the email, where the file should live, whether that request is actually urgent... and then someone asks you to make a decision that genuinely matters.
Good luck to that decision.
A ridiculous amount of work is deciding the same things again
Big decisions are obvious. You know when you’re deciding whether to hire someone, spend the money, launch the program, or change direction.
It’s the little recurring decisions that are sneakier.
Where do these requests go? Who approves this? When should we send this? Which template are we using? What happens when someone misses the deadline? Do we need to talk about this now or can it wait until the weekly meeting?
You answer one and move on. Then some version of the same question shows up again three days later.
That’s the kind of thing I started noticing.
I wasn’t necessarily making hard decisions all day. I was making way too many decisions that should have stopped being decisions a long time ago.
So I started deciding things once
My rule is embarrassingly simple:
If we keep making the same decision, decide it once.
Then give the answer somewhere to live. That might become a recurring calendar rhythm, a checklist, an intake form, a rule, an owner, a template, or one sentence everybody knows.
For example, maybe all event requests come through the same form. Budget decisions go to the same person before anyone commits. Website updates happen on Wednesday. New projects start from the same template.
None of this is groundbreaking. That is precisely why I like it.
I don’t want to spend good thinking on things that do not need fresh thinking.
Defaults are your friend
I think we sometimes resist defaults because they sound rigid. Or boring. I have become a huge fan of boring when boring means I no longer have to figure out the same thing every Tuesday.
A default is simply what we normally do unless there is a reason not to.
It does not mean you can never change it. You are not signing a blood oath over your meeting schedule. You’re just giving yourself a starting answer.
That could look like:
Requests that affect the budget get reviewed before anyone makes a commitment.
Routine updates go into the weekly meeting instead of creating another meeting.
Meeting notes always live in the same place.
If a project does not have an owner, it does not start.
Now when the question comes up, you have somewhere to begin. And more importantly, five different people do not need to solve the same little problem five different ways.
Some choices need fewer options
There is another place where I make work harder for myself: research. I can research the hell out of something.
Give me one tool to choose and suddenly I have twelve tabs open, four YouTube reviews, three pricing pages, a Reddit thread from 2022, and absolutely no idea which option I liked in the first place.
More information feels responsible right up until the point where it makes the decision worse. So I try to shrink the field earlier.
What are the actual requirements? Which two or three options meet them? What can I eliminate immediately because it costs too much, takes too much capacity, or solves a problem we do not have?
Then choose.
You do not always need the objectively best option available somewhere on Earth. You need one that works for the situation you actually have.
Not every decision deserves the same amount of you
This one has become another useful filter for me: How hard would this be to change later?
If the answer is not very hard, I probably don’t need to treat the decision like constitutional law. Pick the reasonable option. Try it. Change it later if it turns out to be wrong.
I want more time around decisions that are expensive, difficult to reverse, or genuinely important to people. Those deserve discussion, thought, and sometimes a whole lot more information.
Whether we use Template A or Template B?
We’re going to survive this.
Sometimes the answer is to stop carrying the thing
The original version of this article had an entire section about subtraction, and I still think it belongs here. Every active thing creates decisions.
A tool nobody really uses still has to be paid for, updated, managed, or eventually canceled. A half-alive project still creates conversations about whether it is happening. An idea sitting in “maybe someday” can somehow keep wandering back into planning conversations like it already has a budget and a staff.
The more moving parts you carry, the more choices they generate.
So sometimes I don’t need another rule… I need to delete something.
Retire the tool. Close the project. Take the idea off the active list. Stop maintaining something simply because at some point somebody thought it sounded useful.
That’s one less thing asking for attention.
Look for the decisions you keep making
This is where I’d start. For one week, notice the questions that make you think: Didn’t we already decide this?
Those are gold. Pick one recurring decision and decide it properly. What should normally happen? Who owns it? Where does that answer need to live so the next person doesn’t have to come find you?
Then do another.
You don’t need to eliminate decisions from your work. Some of the most important work you do is making good decisions. Just stop spending so much of yourself on the ones you could have made once.
Cheers to getting unscattered,
Put this into practice.
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