Early in my career I noticed that whenever I was avoiding a decision, it usually wasn’t because I didn’t know what to do. It was because I knew exactly what to do and didn’t want to do it. The hard conversation with a client about a case that isn’t going the way they hoped. Telling a partner their strategy has a problem. Cutting ties with someone who isn’t working out even though you like them personally. None of these require more research or more time to think. What they require is the willingness to sit in the discomfort long enough to actually act. I’ve come to believe that discomfort is usually a signal, not an obstacle.
This shows up constantly for professionals because our training rewards being thorough, and being thorough can quietly become an excuse for stalling. A lawyer can always do more research. An accountant can always run more numbers. It looks like diligence and sometimes it is, but often it’s just a more respectable way of putting off the moment where you have to take a position with your name attached to it that someone isn’t going to be happy about.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the hard thing and the right thing line up as often as they do. The easy paths tend to be easy because someone else absorbs the cost of you taking them. Avoiding the conversation is easy for you and expensive for the person left guessing. Keeping the wrong hire on staff is easy for you and expensive for everyone covering for them. What I’ve noticed is that the right decision is usually the one where you’re the one who must live and feel the discomfort up front, instead of quietly passing it downstream to somebody else.
None of this means every hard thing is automatically the right thing. Plenty of hard things are just hard. But when you already know what needs to happen and you find yourself stalling, it’s worth being honest with yourself about why. Most of the time it isn’t more information you’re waiting on. It’s more nerve. The professionals I respect most aren’t the ones who never feel that hesitation. They’re the ones who’ve learned to act despite it, faster than the rest of us would prefer to. So, the next time you catch yourself circling a decision you’ve already made and know is right, ask yourself what you’re really waiting for.
