I injured my leg on 1 July, in the dads’ race at my son’s nursery sports day.
A sentence that gets less impressive the longer it goes on.
Someone referred me to an osteopath who works with NBA players. Which sounded great. These people make millions from having functioning legs. Surely they know a guy.
Then I saw the price.
Less great.
So I waited for the NHS.
Now, waiting can be a perfectly sensible decision. But my calculation was basically: this appointment costs money, waiting doesn’t, therefore waiting is cheaper.
An impressive piece of financial analysis if you completely ignore time.
The price of the appointment was right there. A number. I could look at it and wince.
The cost of waiting was harder to see. It arrived a little at a time. More time with the problem unresolved. More attention spent thinking about it. More of my life organised around a leg I would quite like to stop thinking about.
Nobody sent me a bill for that.
So I barely counted it.
I don’t know whether that appointment would have changed my recovery. But I do know I gave the upfront cost far more attention than the cost of delay.
And I think this is a trap we fall into all the time.
You have a decision to make. You know enough to take a reasonable next step. But you don’t feel ready.
So you do a bit more research.
This feels good. Responsible, even. You’re the sort of person who dots the i’s and crosses the t’s. Nobody can accuse you of rushing.
Except… what are you actually trying to find out?
Sometimes there’s a real answer to that question. A missing fact that could change everything.
Other times, you’re hoping the next bit of information will make the decision feel comfortable.
Good luck with that.
You can find ten more opinions. Now you have eleven opinions, several of which disagree, and the same decision to make.
Congratulations. You’ve made your problem bigger.
I think a lot of what we call “being thorough” is being afraid of choosing wrong.
I say this with affection, as someone who can turn a fairly straightforward choice into a small research project.
There’s something comforting about keeping every option open. You haven’t made a mistake yet. You haven’t spent the money. You haven’t picked the thing that might disappoint you.
But you have spent the time.
That part is already gone.
So here’s the question I wish I’d asked myself sooner:
What would I need to learn to change my mind?
If I can name it, I should go and find out.
If I can’t, I should probably stop pretending another evening of research is going to save me.
I may still make the wrong choice. That’s the uncomfortable bit.
But waiting deserves the same scrutiny as every other option.
It has a price too.
- Garvey