What I have gotten out of it is that when making these critical decisions, you need to step back. Gather as much information as you can, think it through, and the decision kind of appears.
There's an excellent monograph that addresses this, "The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis." (link below) Something that comes up in information analysis is that 'more isn't necessarily better.'
"Once an experienced analyst has the minimum information necessary to make an informed judgment, obtaining additional information generally does not improve the accuracy of his or her estimates. Additional information does, however, lead the analyst to become more confident in the judgment, to the point of overconfidence.
Experienced analysts have an imperfect understanding of what information they actually use in making judgments. They are unaware of the extent to which their judgments are determined by a few dominant factors, rather than by the systematic integration of all available information. Analysts actually use much less of the available information than they think they do."
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-t...ysis/index.htmlI've noticed this when I'm evaluating a prospect: I can spend a week on the ground and come up with a conceptual model, then come back several years later, spend several months doing more detailed work (and spend more money) only to change the model little if any.
A friend who's a medic uses a similar concept: "Is the patient breathing? If not, fix it. Worry about the other stuff later."
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