Successful people are claimed to reach decisions promptly and revise them slowly, and unsuccessful people to do the reverse.
Hill drew the rule from his interviews. Read as advice it is dangerous in exactly the cases that matter, since slow revision is indistinguishable from refusal to update, and the successful people who exemplify it are those whose first decisions happened to be right. The defensible fragment is that reopening settled questions has a cost.
In practice
- An executive who never revisits a decision is praised for resolve until the decision is wrong.
- A team that reverses course on new evidence is accused of lacking direction by people using this rule.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation offered is that promptness signals and builds confidence, while frequent revision signals its absence. The researched version separates the two: speed helps where delay is costly, and revision helps where new information arrives.
- In its favour
- Decisiveness does have value where information is not improving and delay carries cost, which is a real class of decisions.
- Against it
- It is directly at odds with evidence on belief updating, which rewards revision in proportion to new evidence, and the rule cannot distinguish slow revision from refusal to update. The evidence offered is testimonial and selected on success.
- Standing
- Testimonial evidence selected on success, with no comparison group. Directly at odds with evidence on belief updating, which rewards revising promptly on new information. The rule confuses decisiveness with accuracy.
- Subject
- Decision-making & Reasoning
- Essay
- Paradoxes that broke theories, and sayings that outlived them