Decision-Making

We were going to launch the feature on Tuesday. Everyone on the team knew it wasn’t ready. The code was buggy. The UX was confusing. We hadn’t tested the edge cases. One of our engineers literally said in standup, “I’m not sure this is going to work well,” but immediately followed it with, “but I guess everyone else thinks it’s fine.” The PM wanted to hit the deadline. The CEO was excited about the demo. The team had momentum. So we all nodded along. ...

I once spent three hours researching React state management libraries. Redux. MobX. Zustand. Jotai. Recoil. XState. Valtio. Context API. useState. useReducer. Each had passionate advocates. Detailed comparisons. Migration guides. Benchmark tests. By hour three, I was paralyzed. Which one was “right”? What if I chose wrong? What if I regretted it? I started with a simple problem: “I need to manage state in my app.” I ended with decision fatigue, imposter syndrome, and zero lines of code written. ...

I spent six months building a SaaS product that nobody wanted. The code was beautiful. The architecture was solid. I’d invested countless nights and weekends. I’d turned down freelance work to focus on it. I’d told everyone it was going to be “the one.” And the market response was… crickets. Any rational person would’ve shut it down and moved on. Instead, I spent another six months trying to “make it work.” I pivoted. I added features. I changed the pricing. I rewrote the landing page seventeen times. ...