What If I Make The Wrong Decision? I’m Scared!
What if you make the wrong decision? You’ve ever been paralyzed by that question in your head I have to and we’re going to talk about how to overcome it and some ways to make better decision coming up. What’s up guys Tim Ruswick here from Game Dev Underground helping you build finish and launch better games. Today we’re talking about decision-making. More specifically what if you make the wrong decision. We’ve all been there.
We’ve all been and whether it’s design decision whether it’s a business decision whether it’s a life decision we’ve all been there. We’ve all been facing this decision looking at it scared of it terrified of it not wanting to make the decision because it could be wrong. Like what if we do the wrong thing. I did this a lot with like investing especially like and— I’m dude okay so I started you know investing in Cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin and theory and all that kind of stuff, and I’m having fun with it.
And I know since I believe in the technology the better thing to do is to hold long term that’s the better strategy is just to buy and hold the dollar cost average which means you just I invest X amount of money per day or per week or per month or whatever and that way I buy more when it’s low and I buy less when it’s high and averages out and I can ride the market essentially doing that. I know that’s a better way to do it but when when the price starts falling and I got money in it I’m losing money there’s a really high urge to pull out to pull my money out and not incur any losses.
When the price starts going up there’s a really high urge to buy more because oh I better jump on this bandwagon and buy more. But sometimes I’m paralyzed and those are wrong decisions by the way those are backwards just in case you wanted any investing advice you should buy low and sell high that’s how you make money. But oftentimes I notice in trading essentially I’m paralyzed by indecision. I’m paralyzed by what if I make the wrong decision and fear is paralyzing. Fear makes you want to stand there and just watch the world burn.
Like watch everything happen because you’re scared that the decision that you make might be wrong. If you make the wrong decision you’re gonna have to deal with the consequences right. And this happens in game development a lot more than you would think it would. I know a lot of people that message me and they’re like you know should I build this thing or should I not should I cut this feature or should I not. Sometimes there’s no right decision right.
Like sometimes worrying about taking the wrong or making the wrong decision is worse than making the wrong decision. And what I mean by that is like imperfect action is almost always better than not making a decision almost always. And I’ve learned this the hard way right like in investing but also in like game development and being paralyzed by fear of indecision of making the wrong decision is almost way worse than just making the wrong decision and moving and correcting it. Now obviously there you know there are some life decisions like if you worry about getting divorced or custody of your kids or something like that like you know think about your decision. But by not making a decision you are existing in this like hyper space in this realm of not good or bad.
And you cannot deal with the consequences as long as you’re stuck in that state of indecision. It’s like a purgatory of indecision. Like you either you either do the right thing you do the wrong thing but you got to do something. Existing in that middle space is the worst possible thing that you could ever ever do. And this has been a big life lesson for me not just a game development lesson but a big life lesson because I mean this lesson has ranged so much in like the pieces of me the pieces to me that I pour into my art like whether it’s music or whether it’s games or whatever making like pouring pieces of myself in and or having other people say no I don’t think that’s being there then pulling them out and then releasing that thing and always wishing that I had that piece in there something like that.
But it’s also happened in like life like I remember when my life was going downhill and shit was going crazy and I was depressed and I was— my bills were piling up my credit cards were getting declined my car got repossessed all that when life was crazy part of what made all that so bad was my indecision. My refusal to like face the problems check my bank balance look at my credit cards consolidate my debt. Figure out all that stuff. Put it all like you know what I mean like like actually look at the problem faced my fear and and make the decision.
And if you think about it like that right like I could have made some wrong decisions I could have paid off a lower interest credit card first. I could have done whatever you know I could have I could have done it the wrong way. But doing it the wrong leg was so much better than not doing it at all. You know like and the same thing applies to game development. Sometimes doing things the wrong way is better than not doing anything at all. Take imperfect action.
That is the lesson. Take imperfect action because imperfect action is always better than indecision or no action at all. And you know what you can adapt when you go the wrong direction. Like we all make mistakes we all make bad decisions. Sometimes you do make a bad decision and you go off the wrong way. If you’re smart you can figure that out and you can readjust you can change your course you can go back to where you wanted to go.
And at the very least that turns into a lesson. Turns into something that you learn something that you can integrate in future decisions something that you can build a build your wisdom upon and kind of learn and get it ingrained in your skull that okay that happens I took responsibility for it. It’s never going to happen again. If you don’t make decisions you don’t ever get there.
And I know a lot of people that unfortunately are stuck in this limbo of life where they don’t make decisions. They don’t go anywhere. And I guess the tomten it’s way more like life advice and finances and all kinds of crazy stuff and game development but it’s important to understand. Because decision making is so important just just implementing stuff taking action moving forward being determined to keep moving forward even if you take the wrong approach even if you make the wrong decision is really important.
That’s how you get stuff finished that’s how you get places in longer term. And there are so many things in my life that have been destroyed or been severely damaged or have just become a train wreck because of my indecision. Because I let things just happen to me rather than taking action in my life. Taking control of things. And especially like if you’re going through something like depression or burnout or anything like that.
Avoiding it pretending it’s not there just is not going to help you it’s not going to help you get out of it. You’ve got to make decisions you have to take imperfect action you have to do these things you have to push through the hard stuff that’s how you get to you know this sustained level of completion. That’s how you that’s how you get past things. So if you’re struggling with something in game development like you know if you should worried about not implementing a feature or what type of feature to add or A or B or whatever pick one and just go with it.
You can always change it later. Sometimes you make the wrong decision sure but making the wrong decision is almost always better than making no decision in anything in life. And that in action man that that paralysis that comes from indecision is so deadly in so many different ways. I mean from from your productivity to your project completion to your finances to your life man. Like just remember that. Don’t be indecisive I have a quote on the bottom of my email: Indecision is the mother of mediocrity. Don’t be average make a decision to be excellent.
So it’s something I really took the heart and there’s something that I really live by and it’s it’s one of the things that I think is kind of helped me through my years of hardships and the things that I went through. I attribute some of my modest successes to to making decisions. Because everyone saw you make you make the wrong decision at the right time and it just it has this weird way of working out and magically kind of connecting dots that you didn’t know existed.
So that’s my message for today got kinda weird and off topic but I hope you found it useful. If you have any comments please leave below I love here coming guys especially on a topic like this.
Until next time I’m Tim Ruswick I’ll see you guys next time.
