Analysis paralysis is not a shortage of information

When the death-by-a-thousand-cuts sets in: do I need five percent more budget, or a different model?

Question 12 of the Index

You have the spreadsheet. You have the pros and the cons, and you added a third column, and somewhere around the third column you noticed the columns had stopped helping, and you kept building them anyway.

Analysis paralysis gets mistaken for a shortage of information, which is why the standard response is to go and get more, and why that reliably makes it worse. A decision that will not close on the evidence you have will not close on twice the evidence. The extra material does not resolve the choice, it postpones it, and the postponing is what the analysis is for.

The tell is that you can already state what each option costs. So ask what you would need to know in order to choose, and listen to whether the answer is a fact or a feeling. If it is a fact, go and get it and you will be finished by Thursday. If the honest answer is that you would need to know how it turns out, then nothing is coming, because you are asking the evidence to carry a risk that only a decision can carry.

There is a second thing underneath, and it is the more useful one. Most stuck choices are not between two options. They are between two versions of the person making them, and a spreadsheet cannot compare those, because it has no column for them and would not know what to put in it.