Excessive deliberation is claimed to become a cause of failure when it substitutes for action.
The maxim is right that deliberation has a cost and silent on when the cost exceeds the benefit. The researched treatments of the same problem, including satisficing and the exploration and exploitation trade-off, specify the conditions under which stopping early pays. Advice to act now does not, and is therefore right roughly half the time.
In practice
- A team that ships a rough version learns what six more weeks of discussion would not have told them.
- A surgeon who acts now rather than completing the diagnosis is following the same advice.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation is that deliberation has a cost which rises while the value of information falls, so past a point more thought is pure loss. Another is motivational, since acting produces feedback that thinking alone cannot.
- In its favour
- It is directionally consistent with research on analysis paralysis and with satisficing, where a good-enough rule outperforms exhaustive search under time pressure.
- Against it
- The maxim says nothing about when the cost of deliberation exceeds its benefit, which is the whole question, and the evidence offered is testimonial and selected on people who acted and succeeded.
- Standing
- Testimonial evidence selected on success, with no comparison group. Directionally consistent with analysis paralysis and with research on decision timing, and it supplies no criterion for distinguishing sufficient deliberation from excessive, which is the whole difficulty.
- Subject
- Creativity & Work
- Essay
- The success literature and its sceptics