Watch Your Wait!

There’s this quote that I remember from the TV show The Sopranos where the main character Tony Soprano (who is the leader of a fictional mafia family in Northern New Jersey) states something to the effect of the following. “More is lost by indecision than wrong decision.” The fictional Tony Soprano character is far from the only person to opine on the timeliness of decisions. The philosophical entertainer Alan Watts has spoken at length about the dangers of attempting to parse each and every nugget of information possible prior to making a decision on something important. The point of both examples above is that when considering a life decision there comes a time when waiting to parse more information just isn’t worth it. I’ll add a final statement to this initial thought, which comes from the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs who once supposedly stated the following. “Artists ship.” To me what Steve Jobs was saying there was that people need to be oriented towards delivering on their goals more than they need to be oriented towards researching and refining their goals.

The question of waiting vs. executing on an idea or a plan is one that has come up many times in my life. It’s been an issue regarding major life events related to relationships, money, health and even creative efforts such as writing. I have found that my approach to handling such things has changed over time. When I was a young adult in my late teens to late twenties I tended to develop ideas then act on them relatively quickly (like within a year). During my thirties to mid-forties I tended to give more consideration to ideas and goals. I think this change was largely driven by the fact that after I started a family there was a lot more at stake with each decision I made. That was not the case during earlier years when any negative outcomes would affect only me. Now as I have moved beyond my forties I find the pendulum swinging back towards shorter periods of contemplation, but periods that are still longer than the ones in my twenties. So what’s changed?

Getting on in years goes hand-in-hand with the reality that you are closer to the end of life than the beginning. This naturally creates a sense of urgency for all major life decisions. The struggle of wait and gather more information vs. do it now takes on a new meaning. This is in addition to the fact that my kids are older and getting close to the point where they should be able to take care of themselves. Still, I take more time to decide on life choices than when I was in my twenties. I chalk that up to the maturity of accumulated experiences. I’ve found that taking action quickly on goals or plans is not always the right choice as evidenced by failures or setbacks that have occurred in my life. On the flip side, I’ve found that aversion to any and all risk can be a bad thing as well. Waiting for extended periods of time to make important decisions can lead to missed opportunities and that most unfortunate feeling of regret. The price we pay for regret tends to be a quiet, but oh so torturous one!

The sum of these thoughts lead me to conceive of the title of this post. Watch your wait! Understand that every goal or dream that you have will absolutely have an expiration date or time when achieving the goal or realizing the dream is no longer feasible. Then you will have to swallow the bitter pill of regret. Allow yourself time to contemplate key life decisions but also set a limit on how long you will contemplate before you start taking action. It’s also possible that you will reach a point in contemplating where you convince yourself to abandon your goal or dream. That’s okay! Some ideas that you have will naturally fall by the wayside. Better to let an idea go than to hold on to it for years and years. Such dreams or ideas that you hold start to occupy so much space in your mind that they can hold you back in other ways. So I think that letting go is a normal part of the process. Take care though not to make abandoning goals or dreams your default decision. You don’t want to be the person who constantly abandons their plans for the future. People like that are crippled by regret in later years more than anyone!

So how do you get to the point where you’re able to objectively determine how long to wait? How long should you contemplate on a goal? How long should you hold on to a dream? How long should you gather information in support of your decision? You will likely be frustrated by the answer. It depends! Because if there was a single approach to achieving goals and dreams in life then everyone would be doing that and it’s likely that achieving things really wouldn’t mean so much. You need to find out what works for you in general and also what works for your particular goal or dream. You may have heard the following somewhere. Rome wasn’t built in a day. I’m sure it wasn’t. But maybe there was one small building that was built in a day. And the time it took to plan the city surely was much longer than the time it took to plan that one building. To learn what’s good for you it’s best to start by achieving smaller things when you are younger and then work up to bigger things. Starting small allows you to get a feel for how you handle the process of achieving a goal and also helps you to build confidence by getting some quick wins.

I do believe that we have a goal and achievement muscle. Like any muscle it will atrophy without exercise. Everyone’s physical muscles start small and then grow (or not) depending on how much they are exercised. If you feel like you’re behind on your goals or would like to get better at dealing with goals or achievements then you need to work on building that muscle by seeking out goals and achievements that can be accomplished in a short period of time like 1 to 3 months. Heck, if you want to start really small then you can seek out goals that you can achieve in a day or a week. There are such things! Those short-term goals are quick wins like I mentioned above. Once you’ve had a series of quick wins you will start to learn something about the power of momentum. Momentum is an amazing multiplier in terms of realizing your life goals and dreams.

I’ll definitely be writing about dealing with the goals and dreams in your life in future posts. For now I want to emphasize how important it is to understand that timeliness is a critical factor in determining your success in achieving your goals and dreams. Don’t be the one who waits for years (or more) to take action on your life goals. Work your achievement muscle. Start small. Build some momentum via quick wins. Do these things and you are more likely to avoid the pain of regret, which some people believe is the worst pain of all!