A founder can spend six weeks choosing software and then hire somebody in nine days. I've seen it enough times that I've stopped treating it as a quirk. They're not thinking about why they make those two decisions so differently. Each one just gets however much attention the founder had available that week.
So when a founder tells me they're stuck on a decision, I don't ask why it's taking so long. I ask what it costs to undo if they get it wrong.
The usual read on analysis paralysis is that the founder is slow, or scared, or can't commit. I don't think that holds up. The founders I work with make decisions all day long, and plenty of them fast. What most founders aren’t giving intentional thought to is how much a given decision is worth before they start working on it.
A $400 subscription and a $200,000 hire could each take three weeks. You and I reading this right now would likely agree that those two decisions are not of the same value. But we’re on the outside looking in and have the luxury of seeing them side-by-side.
The founder in the weeds is in a different mindset. They typically don't have a “decisionmaking process” ready to apply, they just know they have a decision and they want to do it well.
How do they do that? They think about it.
Not sure yet? Think more.
Clarity not coming? Think harder.
And then while the decision is unmade, everything downstream of it is waiting. That's textbook Founder Throughput ceiling. And it goes unrecognized because it seems like you’re giving the situation careful thought.
On the flip side - I don't have much use for the "decide faster" advice either. Speed for speed’s sake gets you a quick bad answer. That’s when you see founders making fast hires - and usually talking about how amazing the candidate is as their justification - when really it’s so they could escape their discomfort of hiring.
The solution isn’t a "make decisions faster” or “stop overthinking" rule. Some decisions are worth more time and effort, and other decisions are worth less. The solution is sorting the type of decision you're stewing on.
Here's a quick filter.
Some things are easily reversed. Software, a vendor, a pricing test, a landing page. You make a decision and later realize you want to change directions? You switch, and it costs you days plus whatever you sunk into setup.
Some things don't unwind easily. A partner. A hire with equity. A lease. Repositioning your business. Those you live with for a while, whether you like it or not.
You can sort most decisions into one of those two buckets in a few seconds. It’s not hard to do, but most don’t.
It’s not "more information". If that’s what you want, you’re not going to decide until you know everything about everything. It’s an impossible goal.
Be more specific. Name the information, name where you'd get it, and say what you'd do differently once you have it.
If you can name it AND you can go get it, then it’s probably worth the time for you to pursue it.
But if you can't name it, you’re not researching anymore, you’re waiting for certainty that isn’t coming. That’s a recipe for stuck. That's when it's time to move forward.
When you're dealing with reversible decisions, think deadline rather than process. Pick the date you'll decide, make the best decision that you can with the information that you have, move into execution, learn, and be prepared to adapt.
Hard-to-unwind decisions get the full treatment. Reference calls. Talking to people who've done it. Working through what happens if it goes badly. Sitting with it over a weekend. These are the ones that warrant slowing down.
And this may come as a surprise, but most founders have maybe three or four genuinely hard-to-undo decisions in a year. Five would be a heavy year.
Everything else is reversible.
So if you're deliberating on everything, you have very little left for the handful that matter. You’re spending the best of yourself on the CRM subscription (or whatever your nagging example is).
If your business is built on your expertise, the quality of your thinking is the product. Clients pay you to consider things carefully. So you’ve been trained to feel like careful consideration means doing the job well.
The habit is useful on the deliverable side, but you probably don’t want to take the rigor you use on client work and point it at your calendar software. At least not by default.
That's one of the specific things that makes the shift from producer to leader awkward. There is no one around telling you where NOT to apply the skill you’re known for.
There's also a reason founders keep studying that’s not about the decision: As long as it's still being studied, it can't be wrong yet. Deciding closes it, and a closed decision can be judged. Learn to recognize when you might be avoiding that.
You don't have to overhaul anything to try this. Next time you notice you're not getting to a decision on something, run it through both questions.
Anything reversible, where you can't name what another week would teach you, decide it. Put a day on the calendar and decide on/by that day.
That's going to free up time. If you have any items that are genuinely hard to undo, you can apply that time to those decisions.
That's the trade you’re making here: less attention spread across everything, more of it where the outcome actually turns.
If everything on your list feels equally heavy, the problem probably isn't your decision-making.It usually means the direction underneath the decisions (your strategy) was never settled, so there's nothing to weigh anything against. That’s a different problem, one the Business Alignment System exists to solve.
I don't know from here which of your decisions belong in which bucket, but you're now half a step from being able to determine that for yourself, and you're equipped for it.
If you want more leverage for yourself - and you do - then this is a tool that you need to work on applying until it becomes second nature.
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I write about this kind of tension every week in The Golden Thread, my newsletter for expertise business founders trying to get untethered from their business.
Nick Berry is an American entrepreneur and business advisor, whose track record includes founding, leading, and advising award winning small businesses since 2002. He has built companies in multiple industries, hosts The Business Owner’s Journey podcast, and created the Business Alignment System™ framework that helps owner-operators scale without burning out.
After his most recent exit he founded Redesigned.Business to advise and coach to other entrepreneurs and business owners who are looking for a trusted (and proven) advisor.
Among peers, colleagues and clients, Nick has been referred to as 'The Anti-Guru', due to his pragmatic approach and principled leadership. He shares his thoughts, experience, and lessons learned each week in The Golden Thread newsletter.
