One-Way vs. Two-Way Decisions⚓︎

Summary⚓︎

Making decisions is something that comes easy to some but not for others. There is an inherent fear involved that comes with making a decision that you may not be able to walk back easily or at all.

The way to get better at this is by understanding the difference between the two types of decisions - one-way door decisions & two-way door decisions.

Definitions⚓︎

These two types of decisions were coined by Jeff Bezos.

One-way door (aka Type 1)—decisions that are almost impossible to reverse. Examples are firing an employee or selling your business. There's no going back from these.
Two-way door (aka Type 2)—decisions which are reversible. Examples include hiring a new employee, starting a new product/service, creating new pricing models. Such decisions may seem frightening at the time but can be modified or reversed, with some time and effort.

As Bezos wrote in his 1997 Amazon shareholder letter.

Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible -- one-way doors -- and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don't like what you see on the other side, you can't get back to where you were before.

But most decisions aren't like that -- they are changeable, reversible -- they're two-way doors. If you've made a suboptimal Type 2 decision, you don't have to live with the consequences for that long. You can reopen the door and go back through.

Putting Into Practice⚓︎

Even if you have to make a one-way door decision, there are still ways of limiting your risk. Getting good at recognising what kind of decision you need to make and then being able to make that decision quickly can give you an advantage.

The usefulness of this distinction comes in the overwhelm that we often surround ourselves with when making (what we think are critically important) decisions. We tend to give too much weight to these decisions and thus get bogged down in analysis. By identifying a decision as a Two-way door (i.e. reversible), you can make it quicker and with much less of an emotional burden.

The end result is that you will make more decisions over the course of your lifetime. And since decisions are what lead to opportunities, you (or your company) will grow more because of it.

What is decision fatigue?⚓︎

Like a muscle fatigues from repeated use, so does our ability to make quality decisions. We need to rest and recharge, ensuring that important decisions are made while we are fresh. Using heuristics like two-way door decision making, we can focus our energy more wisely.

Do we really make 35,000 decisions a day?⚓︎

I can't find an experiment/study that proves that we make 35,000 decisions a day. When I find the number quoted it is referred to as fact or attributed to "various internet sources estimate". It also depends on what you classify as a decision. It seems obvious that we don't ask ourselves 1458 times an hour "Hmmm should I choose X or Y?", especially when we are asleep.