Following your gut can be a good idea sometimes. Thanks for reading, and don't forget to like and subscribe. (Click that bell icon, too.)

‍

........ Halt, by Toutatis! There's a bit more to this.

When faced with a mountain of factors contributing to your decision, it could take you hours, days, or even weeks to arrive at a decision that makes you comfortable. The time you would spend carefully weighing all factors beyond the most important ones keeps you from making progress along the path you simply feel is the right one.

If the consequences are reversible, you'll have lost less in choosing the suboptimal path than you would have if you'd taken extra days to decide.

Combine Slow and Fast Thinking

Let's say you're trying to decide whether to use a SaaS starter kit, a template for common features like authentication and a user dashboard.

You list the factors, like those below:

• Development time. How long do you think it would take you to develop your SaaS application with vs. without a starter kit? This depends on the next factor.
• Learning curve. Would you have to learn a lot of new concepts? Does the starter kit you're interested in have quality documentation and understandable code? For some kits, you might not need to look at the code, while for others you might need to tweak a few things here and there.
• Cost. How much does the starter kit developer charge, if anything?
• Competition. If you have competitors who are trying to get their own product to market, what advantage would you gain by beating them to it? Conversely, what would you lose by being late?
• Switching cost. If the starter kit you chose turns out to be the wrong one, how long would it take to switch to another?

After weighing each factor and plugging them into a tool like The Decision Advisor, you still feel unsure. Should you consider additional factors? Should you look around further?

Maybe you need to spend more time shopping for a better SaaS starter kit for your needs. Or maybe the problem is your choice of framework; it's too heavy and you should find one that lets you whip up an MVP in no time at all. Heck, just go for no-code. Who needs code, anyway?!

Before you know it, you're deep in analysis paralysis and have spent two weeks looking for the perfect solution.

A Better Alternative to Wheel Spinning

Instead of agonizing over whether to use a SaaS starter kit, once you've considered the most important factors, if it seems like you could use a starter kit to build an MVP of your SaaS solution in two weeks of focused hacking, then spending more time weighing the options would be needless delay.

If you're not happy with the results after taking solid action, you'll have learned a lesson. Your codebase can be a foundation for a future project.

For some decisions, you may be falling prey to cognitive biases that, when eliminated, would illuminate the best path forward. For example, the sunk cost fallacy: "I've already spent so much time building this app with framework X, it would be such a waste to throw it away and start over. Even though there are better ones out there, I've gotta find a way to use it!"

Such biases can contribute to a feeling of uncertainty after an honest consideration of the facts.

Conclusion: follow your gut when you've made a solid attempt at making an informed decision through consideration of relevant factors, scanned for cognitive biases and eliminated those you can identify, and are still not confident about a particular path.

‍