General Thoughts on Decisions and Principles

Decisions are tough. They activate our system 2 thinking (see the wonderful book by Daniel Kahnemann: “Thinking Fast and Slow”) and therefore require more energy than our everyday, mundane thought processes.

Decisions also cause fatigue. We have a much harder time making decisions when we are tired. Likewise, when we are forced to make too many decisions over the course of our day, we diminish our ability to concentrate.

Enter principles. Principles are distilled expressions of how we think about the world. They mirror our values and our beliefs. Incidentally, our values and beliefs are also major factors in our decision-making. I therefore consider principles to make makros, little programs that run on autopilot when I need to make a decision. This takes away some, but not all, of the mental cost of decision making.

Because principles play such a large role in our decision-making, we should make them explicit. To ourselves and ideally to our environment. We must also regularly review our principles - outdated principles lead to terrible, potentially ruinous decisions.

My own Principles

This being said, here are my own principles (for now):

General Principles

  1. Don’t oversolve
    YAGNI (You aren’t going to need it). KISS (Keep it stupid simple). Gall’s Law.
    There are many expressions for the same thing. For any given problem, I try to find a solution that is “just right”. This even applies when I can expect to need a “bigger” solution in the future.

Business Principles

  1. For the benefit of the customer.
    Clients ask for many things. Not all of the things they ask for have a tangible business value. I make a point of trying to understand - ideally quantify - this business value. If I do not see the business value, I will point this out to the customer and try to dissuade them from their ask.
  2. Premium Service
    If I can reasonably say or do something that makes my clients happy, I will happily do this, even if I do not personally see the value to them.