Indecision Is Still a Decision

[00:00:01] Welcome to Business Finance and Soul. My name is Shaun Enders and I'm a curious entrepreneur. I love exploring business, personal finance and consciousness. I'll jump around topics, offer my opinions and occasionally interview interesting people. Looking forward to going on this journey. Let's be curious together.

[00:00:30] Welcome back to Business, Finance and Soul. I have another solo episode today. I love having guests on, but at the same time, I just enjoy jumping on and riffing a little bit and sharing some of the thoughts that have been circling around my head. And there's been a lot of them.

[00:00:48] My kids are both going back to school coming up and this is the last week of summer where we all get a chance to hang out and be free and do all of that. So booking guests and having a bunch of them on during the summer takes a lot of time and these solo episodes are awesome to push out.

[00:01:09] So thanks for being here. I hope you get a lot of value from this because today I am talking about decisions and I'm talking specifically about indecision because sometimes doing nothing is a decision. I wouldn't say sometimes. I mean, every time we spend so much time evaluating the risk of making a move.

[00:01:35] You know, in my career, I see people go through the mindset or the decision of should I leave a job? Should I hire this person? Should I fire this person? Should I make that investment? Should I have the difficult conversation? Should I move? Should I change directions? Normally when we're thinking about these decisions,

[00:02:04] we tend to spend a lot of our time thinking about what could go wrong if we make the wrong decision. But do we ask ourselves the opposite question? What happens if I don't make the decision? Because staying where you are, it isn't neutral. Doing nothing, it doesn't magically freeze time. There's a cost to staying comfortable.

[00:02:32] And sometimes that cost is greater than the risk that we were trying to avoid in the first place. There's this illusion of safety. You know, as humans, I think we naturally gravitate toward certainty.

[00:02:49] I know for us when we moved across country, we had really everything dialed in in Southern California. Life was good. Business is good. Friends are great. Our kids were great. You know, things were really going well.

[00:03:07] So just when it came to certainty, that was certain. We weren't leaving because, you know, we were, I guess, trying to avoid pain. We weren't moving away from something we disliked. We were making a decision into the unknown, believing that there was something bigger for us.

[00:03:32] And now a year later, that's turned out to be massively true. But we didn't know it at the time. And you couldn't spreadsheet it. There was no way to be able to create certainty on paper for that type of decision.

[00:03:49] And so when you're looking at making a decision, I think you have to go through this and you have to understand that there are these moments where you're going to either sit in the indecision. You're going to either just say, you know what, I'm going to ostrich this one. I'm going to bury my head in the sand and I'm just going to try to stay comfortable.

[00:04:19] And that's the crazy thing about human behavior. You know, because we naturally gravitate towards certainty. Sometimes even when that certainty isn't particularly great for us, we'll still stay in it. You know, just because we know that we feel it, we it feels, you know, it's more tangible than what's around the corner. So we'll stay in a job that we don't like because at least we know what tomorrow looks like.

[00:04:47] Maybe you'll stay in that relationship because you have rather just, you know, deal with what you know. Maybe you'll keep the employee who isn't working out because replacing them sounds too exhausting. Or you'll leave money sitting somewhere because investing it creates more uncertainty.

[00:05:10] I've been there before. I've left money and, you know, a high yield savings account for too long just because it was making, you know, oh, it's just, you know, making an average. Well, below average if you look at the stock market, but it was just giving you, you know, during its height, a solid 5%. But the stock market was definitely outpacing that. But it was certainty.

[00:05:35] You know, do you have you ever avoided a conversation because you don't know how the other person is going to react? And because of that, you avoid any type of conflict resolution. We can tell ourselves that you're being patient or I'm just being cautious. I'm waiting for the right time. And sometimes that's true. But sometimes it's just the truth that we are afraid to make a decision.

[00:06:05] There's that saying, you know, the analysis paralysis is just you're looking at it and you can't figure it out. And so, you know, you get stuck. But there's an important difference here, though, you know, because patience, being patient, knowing what you're doing, that's intentional. And there's times for that, that you absolutely have to deploy patience. You know what decision you're going to make, but let's be patient here. You know, let's wait for the right time.

[00:06:35] Avoiding it is not. You know, it's not. The strategic way to go about moving, you know, the chess pieces of your life. And in business, you know, it's chocked full of these decisions every single day because I've seen it countless times. And when you have an employee that just isn't performing, maybe they're not terrible. They're just not good enough.

[00:07:02] And those situations can actually be really hard because if somebody is completely failing the decision, super obvious. We've got to go. They are a risk for the business. They're a risk for the department. They're a risk for our culture. But if somebody is operating like 70%, you can start rationalizing it. Oh, they're a good person. They know the company. Maybe they'll turn it around. Replacing them is going to be difficult. And then what are you dealt with?

[00:07:30] Six months later, you've got the exact same conversation, except now you've paid six times more salary. And your team has probably picked up some of the slack. You know, you spent management time dealing with it. But things that happen in our business, you have top performers actually become frustrated because you're holding on to the bottom performers too long. And, you know, that has its own ramifications. But you can't see it at the time.

[00:08:00] And sometimes you even lower your own standards without realizing it. This happens in a lot of areas. And it's really, really frustrating because you can't see it happening. It's very gradual. You know, that's the biggest thing. The price you pay, the cost of inaction, that bill is usually invisible. You know, careers, they work the same exact way.

[00:08:28] And this is the industry that I'm in. You know, I see someone who might be unhappy in their career. They've been unhappy for a couple of years. They get the Sunday night dread. If you've ever felt that. I know we've all probably had a job where you felt that. You just, oh, you know, definitely do not want to go into work the next day. You know, they don't feel like they're learning. Maybe they're making less money. Maybe you're making less money that you're capable of earning.

[00:08:58] And you don't particularly like the people that you work with. But you stay because leaving feels too risky. And guess what? Maybe leaving is risky. And so I'm not suggesting that someone impulsively quit their job. But there's another side of the equation, right? If you stay another three years, what does that cost you? Three years of development somewhere else. Maybe more earning potential. Maybe building other relationships somewhere.

[00:09:28] You can calculate the downside of not taking another opportunity. But it is something that we rarely calculate. Something that we rarely pencil out. Because it feels, again, it feels kind of intangible. It feels, you know, I guess too whimsical.

[00:09:53] To kind of take these things that you're thinking about and actually quantify the upside or the losses. I think money is the easiest example because money makes the concept so easy to understand. Because if you have, you know, 100 grand sitting in cash because you're afraid of investing it. You know, when I'm not saying cash is bad. There's plenty of reasons to hold cash. But imagine cash sits there for 10 years, especially in this high inflationary period, right?

[00:10:22] Where we have inflation at 3%, 4%, 5%, 6% at times. And, you know, that inflation is reducing your purchasing power. And so essentially that $100,000 is actually losing money. And you can see, had I invested it, I would have made X for my ROI. That's the thing.

[00:10:48] You can easily, at that point, quantify what you lost by not making a decision. But that's the thing about this, about, you know, indecision, is that by not choosing, you still chose. You still chose. And you chose incorrectly. And that's why comfort has a price.

[00:11:15] Now, I've started to think differently about comfort. Because we know, even with comfort food, you know, are you comfortable when we ask someone? Everything is about comfort as being positive. And so we associate, you know, comfort with being good. And of course, some comfort is great.

[00:11:42] But too much of it can be expensive. Because comfort makes it easy to postpone things. I'll do it next year. Comfort's the reason that you don't go to the gym at 5 in the morning. Because it's uncomfortable. Right? Right? I'll start next week. I'll make the call tomorrow. I'll have that conversation after the holidays. You know, I'll start the business when the economy gets just a little bit better.

[00:12:10] Or I'll travel when the kids get older and they're a little easier to get to the airport. You know, the one that I think I love is, you know, oh, I'll slow down a little bit once I make more money and I'm more comfortable. But five years goes by, what ends up happening? There's danger in that. And the cost of comfort, it doesn't show up today. It's not a thing that just immediately is put in your face.

[00:12:39] It compounds. It compounds. So I think the point of this is to talk about comfort, to talk about indecision, and to talk about the cost of waiting for that perfect information. I've had to remind myself that at different times throughout my career, you know, often we want to know the outcome before we make the decision.

[00:13:11] But let's be real. It's impossible. It's absolutely impossible. You can research. You can prepare. You can talk to smart people. You can, you know, calculate the probabilities. But eventually, every meaningful decision requires you to jump into some pool of uncertainty. And I think successful people become comfortable with that.

[00:13:34] And they're not reckless or careless, but they become comfortable with making those decisions without having 100% certainty. Sometimes 70% of the information has to be enough. Because while you're waiting for that other 30%, the opportunity might disappear. That's the crazy part. Things come and things go. You know, so here's something I've been trying to do.

[00:14:03] Whenever I'm facing a meaningful decision, instead of only asking what happens if I do this, I'll also ask what happens if I don't. You know, for me, when we moved cross-country, I asked myself and my wife and I were talking and I said, if we were 70, would we regret not doing this? That was it. It wasn't tied to finances.

[00:14:29] It wasn't tied to anything other than how would we feel if we fast forward, you know, 25, 30 years down the road? Would we actually regret not taking advantage of this when everything becomes easier and you look back at your life and you're like, why did I do that? Because that's the way hindsight is, right? You know, everything's so clear at that point. You can go, why wouldn't I have taken that chance? Now I'm secure. Why wouldn't I have done that?

[00:14:58] And we knew that the answer was 100%. Yeah, we'll regret this. So we had to make it happen. So whenever I'm making that meaningful decision, I'm saying what happens if I do it, but also what happens if I don't? And then I take it a step further. What does doing nothing cost me? If I don't do anything, is it money, time, opportunity, relationships, growth, stress, regret? That was the thing.

[00:15:27] If we do nothing and we stay in a really comfortable space in our life, will we regret it? That's one of the key elements. How will our relationships be with our family? You know, so for us, it wasn't immediately just about money or opportunity. Some people move for jobs. That wasn't this. What does doing nothing cost me in relationships? We knew that was very obvious.

[00:15:54] We've been back here for a year and there's been tremendous growth in our familial relationships. Now we have to work harder with our friend relationships, but we've been able to add our family relationships to the mix, which has been amazing. And we're going to continue to keep our friend relationships strong. And then also regrets. We now have none. And when I'm 70, I'll look at this and go, yeah, I'm so glad I made that decision.

[00:16:21] There's another exercise I really like is that you can take whatever decision that you're struggling with and just say, okay, if I do nothing for the next five years, am I okay with where this leads? It's because we've done that before too. And punted. We started talking 11 years ago about making a move. So it wasn't just like, oh, hey, Shaun has an idea. It comes into my mind. And then I just perfectly executed. No, this was a long tail on this decision.

[00:16:51] But if you ask yourself, if I do nothing for the next five years, am I okay with where this leads? It's super powerful. And you can do this. You can imagine the same job, the same income, the same relationship dynamics, your health. You know, the habits and frustrations. Would you be okay five years with exactly the same? Now, it's not going to look exactly the same, but are you happy if it did?

[00:17:18] And, you know, if you're uncomfortable, that's good information. You probably know something needs to change. Not every decision means taking a huge leap. You know, making a decision doesn't always mean blowing everything up, like us moving cross country. That's a big one. But if you're unhappy in your career, you don't have to quit tomorrow. Maybe the decision is updating your resume.

[00:17:48] Making five calls. Talking to a recruiter. You know, learning a new skill. You start small. But movement matters. So my challenge to you, and it's my challenge to me every single day, is I think about one area of my life where I've been delaying a decision. Just one. Sometimes it's in our business.

[00:18:16] Sometimes it's financial or investment. Sometimes it's with the kids. Sometimes it's in our business. And then I ask myself, am I genuinely being patient? Or am I voiding discomfort? And then I ask, what's the cost of doing nothing? Not tomorrow. Think a year, three years, five years. If nothing changes.

[00:18:42] Because I know the greatest risk isn't making the wrong decision. For me, the greatest risk is staying exactly where I am. And then I have to remember and remind myself that doing nothing is still a decision. So I'm making a decision. And you have to make sure it's the decision you actually want to make. So thank you, as always. If you haven't rated the show, I ask that you do.

[00:19:11] It helps promote business finance and soul. It helps push the algorithm to continue for us to find new listeners. And our listenership continues to grow. And I'm so thankful for that. So please, rate the show. Five stars if you're having a great time listening to it. If I'm adding value in your life. And thanks for listening. And until next time, stay curious. Five stars if you want to add GOL. Bye.