Welcome to the Brilliance Brief. Every week, we break down leadership, mindset, and personal growth into something real and doable. Expect research-backed insights, a little storytelling, and practical ideas that actually fit into your life (even the messy parts).

By nature, I am a chronic overthinker.

If a decision has 4 different angles, my brain will search for a 5th.

For most of my career, my instinct was the same. Gather more information. Make another list of pros and cons. Wait until I felt more certain.

Then I had to decide whether to leave my corporate career and build a business of my own. 

That instinct nearly paralyzed me.

I loved the people I worked with. I had a reputation I’d spent more than a decade building. A paycheck I could count on. 

Walking away meant betting on myself with no guarantee it would work.

I spent months tossing and turning, losing sleep, and trying to forecast every risk. I convinced myself that if I just found one more piece of missing data, the right path would become obvious.

Instead, the opposite happened. The more data I gathered, the harder the decision became.

Psychologists call this Hick’s Law. The more data and options you have, the longer it takes you to choose. 

Think about ordering at a restaurant. At In-N-Out, you order in about 4 seconds. There’s 3 choices. 

At The Cheesecake Factory, it takes 20 minutes. Their menu has a table of contents.

If you’ve ever felt trapped in this loop of indecision, you’re in good company. Surveys show that up to 85% of professionals suffer from analysis paralysis or decision distress. 

We tell ourselves that more information lowers the risk. But past a certain point, it does the opposite.

It spikes your anxiety, creates mental fatigue, and makes you second-guess everything.

You end up chasing a guarantee that doesn’t exist.

My favorite way to think about decisions comes from Jeff Bezos. 

He says there are two kinds of doors.

#1: One-Way Doors: High-stakes, irreversible decisions. Once you step through, you can’t easily walk back. 

Selling a company, signing a long lease, or leaving a career are One-Way Doors. 

#2: Two-Way Doors. Reversible decisions. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can turn around and walk right back out. 

Testing a new process, changing how your team runs a meeting, or introducing a new client service are Two-Way Doors.

Most of us treat Two-Way Doors as One-Way Door decisions.

We waste weeks agonizing over choices that could easily be adjusted in 10 minutes if they go sideways.

When I look back at leaving my corporate career, none of the spreadsheets I built protected me from the work of adapting in real time. 

If my new business had struggled, I could have reached out to my network, adjusted, and found another path.

Confidence gets built through action. Not analysis.

Think about one decision you’ve been putting off this week. Maybe it’s about your team, career, or personal life.

Ask yourself these two questions:

#1: “Is this a One-Way Door or a Two-Way Door?”

#2: “If this doesn’t work out, what’s my recovery plan?”

If the door is reversible, make the decision today. Inform the people who need to know, and take your first action step.

You don’t need total certainty to move forward. 

You just need enough clarity to start, and the confidence that you’ll figure out the rest as you go.

Talk soon,
Justin

P.S. Speaking of food…

When you’re at a restaurant, do you read the whole menu or order the first thing that sounds good? 

Hit “reply” and let me know.