You are not a bad thinker. You are carrying too many decisions that were never finished.

Most advice on this subject teaches you to reason better. That is not where the time goes. The time goes into the choice you have researched three separate times, the conversation you have rescheduled twice, the thing you decided in March and quietly reopened in May. Each one keeps a small light on in your head, and other people are waiting behind it.

This is a working system for finishing decisions. You will learn to state a decision in one sentence so you can see whether it is one decision or three. You will sort by what can be undone and what delay actually costs. You will set a stopping rule for research before you start researching. You will announce a call in four sentences, close the door on it, and book a date to review it rather than relitigating it at midnight.

There is a chapter on deciding with a partner or a co-lead when neither of you holds the casting vote, one on the decisions you avoid until the calendar decides for you, and a two-hour session for clearing the backlog you are carrying right now. Where a decision needs a clinician, a lawyer or a regulated adviser, the book says so and stops.

This book was created with generative AI. The text was generated by an AI system and reviewed and edited before publication.