When You’re Stuck, Stall
In her uproarious memoir, Bossypants, Tina Fey describes one of the most pivotal decisions in her career (whether she’d portray an upstart Vice Presidential candidate from Alaska on Saturday Night Live) thus:
“We decided not to decide. This is another technique I learned from Lorne. Sometimes if you have a difficult decision to make, just stall until the answer presents itself.”
Sounds a lot like Frank Lloyd Wright, doesn’t it? As spy-turned-researcher Donald MacKinnon illuminated in his landmark study of practical creativity, often what distinguishes “the greats” from the rest is a willingness to not decide, yet. Answers have a tendency to “present themselves” to folks who delay decisions, especially to the ones who expect good ideas to keep coming.
The key, however, is to actually care about the solution. If you don’t care, you’re just procrastinating; delaying a decision when you care about the outcome, however, is totally different: it’s a productive strategy to court serendipity.
Related: Delay Decisions
Related: Expect Good Ideas to Come Late
Related: Drive Innovation Through Care
Click here to subscribe to Paint & Pipette, the weekly digest of these daily posts.
Standing in my hallway surrounded by broken glass, I asked AI for 10 terrible ways to respond. What came back changed how I think about parenting—and about AI.