The Hidden Cost of Hard Decisions

June 01, 2025

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Ever notice how the toughest decisions in your life seem to stick around the longest? There's a reason for that.

The big decisions that paralyze you aren't hard because you're indecisive—they're hard because you've already picked all the easy fruit.

Here's what I've learned about decision-making that changed everything for me: The speed of growth depends on your speed of decision-making, which depends on how clearly you can think. 

Most of us get trapped in endless cycles of uncertainty. "I don't know what to do" becomes a week, a month, a quarter, or years where nothing changes. We pay the ultimate price: never achieving what we truly want.

Let me explain what makes decisions so difficult. The obvious, risk-free choices? You've already made those. What's left are the choices with real tradeoffs.

Consider this entrepreneur I spoke with. He'd built a million-dollar business in 18 months, but 80% of his revenue came from beginners—while he desperately wanted to serve higher-level clients who were better for his business.

The apparent conflict? To attract better clients, he needed to say no to existing ones. That meant his revenue would drop before it could grow.

Most people stay stuck forever in this exact spot. They look back years later to find nothing has changed because they changed nothing.

These decisions are painful because they require temporary steps backward to move forward.

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Like investing—your bank account must go down before it comes up. When you lift weights, muscles break down before growing stronger.

There's usually a step back required for a leap forward. The only guarantee? If you never take that step back, you'll never get the outsized return. I've found the clearest way past decision paralysis is to spell out both sides of the trade.

If you want the novelty of running five different businesses, the trade is never building something truly significant.

If you want something massive, the trade is giving up that novelty.

This clarity has given me outsized returns. When I consolidated from nine different businesses to one focused company, I roughly 10x'd my income.

The most painful part?

The better you are—the more capable and potent—the more things you can do decently well while still giving up the aggregate upside, which is almost always exponentially bigger than your scattered version.

Remember: if you want everything from life, you'll get nothing. The hard choices are hard because you've used up all your easy decisions.

The more irreversible decisions you make, the better you get at making them.

But you have to start.