You probably have the information you need to be able to make a good decision. If you take the time to look at the information you have, if you employ some of the things that we've talked about on this show about better decision making, if you pay attention to why you're proposing a particular direction, then you most likely have the basic tenets of decision making in place. And yet, when you come up with what you think is the right answer, there's often a barrier to actually making that decision. We're going to talk about those barriers today as a primary strategy for making better decisions. My name is Jonathan Cottrell and you're listening to Developer Team. You can probably think of something that fits in this category. You know in your mind, you know in your thinking, your slow thinking brain, that some of the best ways to spend your time, you have a list of those. You know that spending your time outside and enjoying nature or spending your time outside and enjoying nature or exercising, spending your time getting some extra sleep, being with family and friends, focusing on the most important thing on your to-do list. These are all kind of the obvious things. You know what they are. And yet, something gets in the way. We procrastinate. Instead of going outside, we end up sitting on the couch and watching TV. Instead of working on the most important thing, maybe we work on something that's a little bit easier to knock out. Or we browse Hacker News. And sometimes, not always, but sometimes, the right thing is actually the easier thing to do. And yet, something stands in your way. For example, put yourself in this story. You've been working on a project for a long time. A year or two ago, the project started. Everybody believed that the project was going to go well. You spent a lot of time up front designing and doing research to make sure that your plans for the project made sense. You even hired the right talent. And you revisited those plans on a regular basis. You planned a backlog. You tried to approach it from an MVP-first standpoint. The quality of the work is excellent. You have good test coverage. Your tech stack is resilient. It's well-designed. And yet, you know that you should cancel the project. Now, why you should cancel the project is specific. Maybe you found that the functionality that you're building is actually duplicative of something else that your company already does. Or maybe your user base desires, their needs have shifted significantly. Or maybe there is a more pressing need, a bigger opportunity, that you could spend your time on as a team instead. And yet, there's friction. Something standing in the way of you canceling this project. In this case, we have a sunk cost fallacy. The idea that we've already spent some amount of time, and if we stop now, we lose all of that time. Take a moment and imagine how the idea of quitting this project or suggesting that we stop the project, when you're done with it, when you're 80 or 90% of the way done, how does that make you feel? Well, most people feel apprehensive about this. If you're like most people, this is going to carry a lot of social consequences. You've been working on a project for a couple of years, and you're canceling it at the very end? Why? Why didn't you just follow through and finish it? These are the kinds of questions you may be afraid of being asked. And the truth is, sometimes those questions are hard to answer. You may have a bunch of context about your specific project that somebody else may not have. And so your answer is ultimately going to fall flat. The fear of that moment, the fear of being looked at as somebody who doesn't follow through with their commitments, is enough, often, to override the more rational decision. When you look at your options, and you recognize that the best option is also one that comes with a lot of pressure, is a social cost. Your brain has to do a lot of complex calculations, recognizing that you have some expected value in one category that's competing with an expected loss in a different category. The same can be said about all of those personal habit friction points. You know that you can get some long-term value out of getting up off the couch and going for a run, but you get short-term value, that feeling of comfortability, by sitting on the couch. And your brain has a hard time calculating these two things in a way that actually compares them. Is that long-term benefit sufficient to motivate you to get off the couch? I don't have any tips or tricks for you in this episode about how to fix this problem. What I will say is that most people focus on the wrong side of the problem. That is, trying to make the case, for the right thing. Trying to push themselves over the hill, to find the motivation, or to generate enough reasoning around why they should quit that project. Instead, what we should be focused on is the friction itself. Instead of trying to create the most compelling reason to quit that project, focus on reducing the amount of social blowback. This can happen at the cost of your life. At the cultural level, you support, at a cultural level, let's say you're a manager, you should be cultivating your company, you should be cultivating your team, in a way that stopping projects early, abandoning projects, is normal. Not only is it normal, it becomes a critical part of decision-making. Leaving behind unnecessary work should be a common practice in our day-to-day lives. And so, these kinds of decisions, when you create the social atmosphere that supports those decisions, you've reduced the friction to making the right decision in the first place. Another silly example, but actually could be very effective, when you are deciding on whether you want to exercise or not, don't decide when you're on the couch. Decide when you're already up and moving. For example, maybe you're running an errand. Right when you get home, instead of sitting down, don't ever get into that position where you have to make the choice to overcome that friction. Reduce the friction by going straight to put on your tennis shoes. Your enemy, when you're trying to make good decisions, is not a lack of knowledge, it's not a lack of motivation, usually. Instead, it is simply friction. Focus on reducing the friction to making the right decisions. And I can make you a personal promise that it will change the way you think about your work, and life. It is that revolutionary. If you focus on the friction rather than on the motivation or on the knowledge, it's going to change the way you live your life, and it'll change the way that you make decisions in the first place. I know that sounds a little bit big, but it does impact every area of your life. So it actually does change it in some small or sometimes some big ways. Try it out. If it doesn't work, then you have my permission to stop listening to this podcast forever. Thanks so much for listening to today's podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Developer Tea. I hope you enjoyed this discussion on making good decisions and not just making good decisions, but creating the environment where good decisions can naturally happen. You already have what you need to make those. You know what they are. Make it possible and easy for that to happen. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed this discussion, I'd encourage you to do two things right now, right this second. Pull your phone out, whatever you're listening on. Maybe you're listening on a computer, but you're probably, you're on your phone. Subscribe to whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast so you don't miss out on future episodes. And then join our totally free community on Discord. DeveloperTea.com slash Discord. This is a reliable place for us to continue discussions on these topics. It's totally free. I have no plans of ever trying to monetize anything there. You know, we're not trying to mine information out of you other than trying to figure out what it is that you are struggling with. So we can talk about it on the show, or we can talk about it in that community. Again, that's the DeveloperTea.com slash Discord. Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea. Thank you.