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Okay, I admit it: I’m a chronic overthinker. Making decisions has always been hard for me, and even after finally deciding on something, thoughts keep lingering in my head about whether I made the right decision.
Putting myself out there through my social media presence, on Medium, and through this newsletter has helped me a lot with this issue and reduced my tendency to overthink everything. I’m still not where I want to be yet, and I admire people who just ship fast, but I’ve improved a lot over the last few years.
And a recent study shows that when you have plenty of experience in a certain field, faster decisions are often better than slow ones.
Faster decisions are often better than slower ones
The study authors analyzed an impressive number of 215,000 moves from around 3,600 in-person games between professional chess players. The most striking result: shorter decision times were associated with qualitatively better decisions, even when the difficulty was held constant. In other words, in situations that were equally hard, faster decisions were better than slower decisions.
How did they measure decision quality? They used a sophisticated AI-driven chess algorithm that computes the best next move based on the current chessboard configuration, and they compared it with the chess players’ actual moves.
“With this study, we’ve been able to show that, if you keep the objectively measurable difficulty of the decision constant, somebody who thinks for longer will make worse decisions.”
…said Dr. Uwe Sunde, lead author of the study, in a press release.
The result seems somewhat contradictory to common sense, because a longer, deeper analysis of a situation should lead to a better decision, don’t you think?
This study shows the opposite.
And it teaches us (especially the overthinkers like me) an important lesson: Speed might win over long deliberation.
Importantly, the study focused on professional chess players who participated in tournaments, indicating a high level of expertise. The “faster decisions = better decisions” likely won’t apply to situations where you have little experience and knowledge.
Why are fast decisions good in your areas of expertise?
The key lies in your intuition, the wealth of knowledge that you’ve accumulated over time, which helps you recognize certain patterns in situations that require a decision. In this case, when confronted with a situation, your intuition helps you respond quickly without being able to explain why. It’s implicit wisdom.
Sometimes it might be better to listen to your intuition when making a decision in situations or contexts where you’ve already gained a lot of experience. This study is a reminder that slow decision-making processes involving in-depth analysis aren’t always better than quick, intuitive decisions.
So, next time you’re facing a decision in an area where you have lots of experience (and the stakes aren’t too high), try going with a fast, intuitive decision and see what happens. I’ll also try to do this more often!
That’s it for today!
And now?
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Until next time!
Best wishes,
Patricia (Dr. Schmidt) from creatorschmidt.com
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