With most efforts there is an inherit tradeoff between speed and accuracy. Too much time planning will delay your progress, but acting too quickly can waste effort and slow your progress in the long run.

If you aren't making mistakes you probably aren't moving fast enough.

Let's take a look at the two extremes:

Too Fast – quick and frequent action without understanding how each action leads to different outcomes. On the positive side this often results in a lot of things getting done, but on the negative side this means spending a lot of time repeating effort, fixing past mistakes, and working toward dead-end directions. This will often look "sloppy" in a work environment. This is under-optimization.

Too Accurate – thoroughly considering every possible angle of the situation before making a move. On the positive side this means rarely making a missteps and picking the right path a lot of the time, but on the negative side it can lead to a crippling need to have a complete understanding of every situation before doing anything: which is not very effective. This looks like perfectionism or micro-managing in a professional environment. This is over-optimization.

To be the most effective person you want to think and plan just enough to make good decisions, but not so much as to slow down your action. You might make a few more mistakes than the most accurate person, and maybe check off slightly fewer to-do items than the fastest person, but overall you'll complete more constructive actions than either other category and over time you'll make more progress than any other category.

Finding the optimal line

The difficult part is knowing exactly when you've planned the right amount. It's rarely possible to know this accurately (and that would probably be over-optimization) but I think it's something you can learn to estimate well.

Ideally, you want to plan until the value of more planning is close to zero and then take action. To find that value you need to estimate two components:

1. How much will your outcome improve from more planning?
2. What is the cost of more planning (delaying action)?

Then you can understand the basic tradeoff:

value of planning = improvement in outcome (better action) – cost of planning (time/effort)

In most cases it's very difficult to know any of these variables with detail, however, so I've found that it's best to learn a set of heuristics to estimate.

When to act quickly

• If the cost of waiting is very high. There's an emergency and something needs to be done: you won't make the best choice in the moment but doing anything at all is better than waiting.
• If the available options are substantially similar. It doesn't matter much which move you make so additional planning has little value, pick one and go for it.
• If you can't predict which option is best. You've eliminated the obviously bad choices but out of 3-5 remaining options you are just guessing as to which is the best move. The only way to find out is to act and learn more.
• If the cost of a mistake is very low. In this case it usually makes sense to just try some different actions because you can learn more from doing them and usually make faster progress than just trying to think your way to a best solution.

When to plan carefully

• If the cost of a mistake is very high. If you work for NASA or SpaceX and each calculation needs to be correct or something explodes. You probably want to plan very carefully and have systems in place to check your work.
• If delaying action actually helps you. In some cases waiting can be a benefit: maybe you're gathering more information over time and waiting will lead to a much better move in the long run
• If the problem is fully solvable. If the decision you're making or project you are working on has a distinct solution, and you have enough information to find that solution, it can often make sense to plan until you have the exactly correct action.
• If you have a lot of information to process. Sometimes there is a lot of new information all at once and parsing through it to even understand available choices can take a long time. In these cases it often makes sense to spend time thinking and understanding

Signs you might be moving too fast

• If you are constantly doing tasks but your goal doesn't get closer
• If you frequently have to rebuild, start over, or repeat effort
• If you regularly have to clean up after choices you made in the past

Signs you might be planning too much

If you rarely ever make mistakes.
In most projects there are phases where the best decision can't be known in advance and the ideal move is to pick one and try it out. If you never make mistakes it means you're never taking action into uncertainty, which means you might be moving much more slowly than if you were willing to just go for it and occasionally miss a shot.

• If you can't take action without having all of the information
• If you procrastinate on tasks that involve uncertainty
• If you spend all of your time perfecting things but don't ship

taking action creates more information

Tip – consider taking a smaller step

If you feel stuck between several options and added planning isn't helping, but you still aren't ready to make the full decision yet (maybe the consequences are high), you can take a smaller intermediate step to gather more information and "unstick" your planning.

Do you have enough information?

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