I used to make a pros and cons list almost for every decision.
It was tiring until I learned this: We make thousands of decisions daily. Some are conscious decisions. Others are unconscious. The good news is we have frameworks to make decisions easier.
One question you should ask when deciding: Is it a one-way or two-way door decision?
As human beings, we tend to be over analysers. We want to learn all the things. We want to do things properly.
This sometimes slows our decision-making process. It creates an analysis paralysis without any action. Some choices are like “One Way Doors,” irreversible and with significant consequences, while others are like “Two Way Doors,” where you can backtrack and correct your course.
Where it originally comes from: Jeff Bezos, in one of his earlier annual stakeholder letters, introduced two types of decisions.
The first type is “one-way doors”. These need long and careful consideration. Yet, most decisions aren’t like that. Neither in business nor in life. Most of them are changeable and reversible. They’re two-way doors. Bezos says in the letter that there is a tendency in big organisations to treat decisions as irreversible when actually, they are reversible.
Understanding this concept was an eye-opener for me to categorise my decisions better. For “One Way Door” decisions, I took my time, gathered information, and carefully analysed the potential outcomes – as I did previously. But I embraced a more agile mindset for “Two Way Door” decisions, not fearing mistakes but viewing them as opportunities to learn and grow.
Next time you feel indecisive, ask yourself: Is it a one-way or two-way door decision? Make reversible decisions as soon as possible and make irreversible decisions as late as possible
Emre Guney 