I stopped trying to know before I decide

There's this thing founders do when they hit a decision that actually matters. They research. They model scenarios. They talk to advisors. They build spreadsheets with best case, worst case, and the always-delusional "realistic" case.

They're trying to turn an uncertain decision into a certain one.

It doesn't work.

I watched a founder spend six weeks researching whether to pivot. Built a whole decision framework. Talked to 20 customers. Made projections three years out. You know what happened? After all that work, she still didn't know if pivoting was the right move. She just had more data to agonize over.

The mistake wasn't doing research. The mistake was thinking research would make the decision obvious.

Here's what I've noticed: If you can know the right answer before you decide, it wasn't a hard decision. It was just analysis.

Hard decisions have a different shape. The data points both ways. Smart people you trust give you opposite advice. Every framework you apply gives you a different answer.

Most founders recognize this intellectually. Then they try to escape it anyway.

They keep researching because more information feels like progress. It isn't. You're not getting closer to certainty. You're just getting better at articulating your uncertainty.

The companies that move fast? They're not smarter about predicting outcomes. They're just more comfortable deciding without knowing.

When I say "decide in uncertainty," I don't mean guess randomly. I mean accept that you're choosing between futures you can't fully see.

Some decisions are bets on which problem matters more. Fire this person or give them another quarter? You don't know if they'll turn it around. You're betting on whether the cost of being wrong outweighs the cost of moving too slow.

Some decisions are bets on your own capacity. Take this partnership or stay focused? You don't know if you can handle the complexity. You're betting on your ability to adapt.

Some decisions are just bets on taste. This feature or that one? The data's ambiguous. Your experts disagree. You're betting on your instinct about what users will care about.

None of these get easier with more analysis. They require you to choose while the outcome is still unknown.

I started tracking how founders use information when they're stuck on a decision. Pattern that showed up: They use research to avoid deciding, not to inform the decision.

If you're gathering information that could actually change your choice, that's useful. If you're gathering information that makes you feel more responsible for the choice you already knew you had to make, you're stalling.

Watch what happens when someone brings you new data about a hard decision. Does it clarify which option is better? Or does it just give you more things to consider that don't actually tip the balance?

Most "due diligence" on hard decisions is the second kind. You're not learning which path is right. You're just building a more detailed map of two equally viable (or equally risky) paths.

The founders who get better at this don't gather more information. They get better at naming what they're afraid of.

"I don't want to fire them because what if they were about to turn it around and I just didn't give them enough time?"

"I don't want to take the partnership because what if it distracts us and we lose focus on the core product?"

Say the fear out loud. Now you can decide if you're willing to live with being wrong about that specific thing.

This is different from de-risking the decision. You're not making it less likely to go wrong. You're deciding whether you can handle it when it does.

One founder I know makes hard calls by asking: "Which version of being wrong can I recover from faster?" Not which option is more likely to work. Which failure mode he can bounce back from.

That's not defeatist. That's just honest about what deciding in uncertainty means.

When I look at founders who don't get paralyzed by hard decisions, here's what they do:

They set a research window. Could be a day, could be a week. They gather information during that window. Then they decide with whatever they learned. They don't extend the window because the answer isn't clear yet.

They name their assumptions explicitly. "I'm betting that we can hire fast enough to support this." "I'm betting that the market cares more about speed than polish." Write them down. You're not validating assumptions. You're stating what you believe so you can test it later.

They make the call and move. Not because they've seen the future. Because sitting between two options costs more than choosing wrong.

And here's the thing that surprised me: They're not more often right than the founders who agonize. They just learn faster. Because they get to see what happens instead of modeling what might happen.