I’m like you, with the agonizing cost/benefit spreadsheets, and lately I try to remind myself that “choices are bad”, which implies that the act of making a choice at all (and moving on) has an inherent positive bias to it, because it frees you from what could become a miserable sunk-cost feedback loop (“I’ve spent so much time on this already, so I’d really better make the optimal decision now, but to do that I’ll need more time...”).
Also, I know offhand what my salary comes down to per hour, so I use that as a rule of thumb when deciding how much time to spend on a decision (given how much value is at stake in the decision).
I assume you’ve read Zvi’s Choices are bad?
I’m like you, with the agonizing cost/benefit spreadsheets, and lately I try to remind myself that “choices are bad”, which implies that the act of making a choice at all (and moving on) has an inherent positive bias to it, because it frees you from what could become a miserable sunk-cost feedback loop (“I’ve spent so much time on this already, so I’d really better make the optimal decision now, but to do that I’ll need more time...”).
Also, I know offhand what my salary comes down to per hour, so I use that as a rule of thumb when deciding how much time to spend on a decision (given how much value is at stake in the decision).