Should you decide now or later? -- The pros and cons of delaying a decision

The situation where we can make a decision now or delay it occurs basically every day in our personal lives and at work. Two examples are:

• Should I rent the best apartment available at the moment (e.g. a nice two-room apartment at Helsinginkatu) or search for a better one?
• Should we (a team that builds ad campaigns) decide the sub-elements included in the advertisement campaign now, or should we start with some parts and decide about the rest as the overall picture becomes clearer?

These are obviously important decisions and as in any important decisions the rational procedure is to think of the pros and cons of the possible actions. Here the possible actions are ‘make the decision now’ and ‘delay the decision’.

I discussed this topic with some colleagues and friends and came up with the following general list of different types of pros related to these alternatives. Note that pro's of one alternative can be seen as con's of the other.

Some pro's related to 'deciding now' and to 'deciding later'

Delaying the decision may obviously help you in two ways. First, it may help at coming up with new (and better) decision alternatives, such as another apartment or new ideas for the campaign. Second, it may lead to more accurate reasoning on how good each of the alternatives is. For example, you may figure out that social media campaign really is not a good idea for the campaign since it would probably have a small effect in the target audience.

Making the decision sooner, on the other hand, gives you the benefits of the decision earlier, saves time and enables coordination etc. In apartment renting, benefits earlier means that if you decide now you get to move to the new apartment sooner and do not have to stand the current (possibly very inconvenient) situation longer. Time saving simply comes from having to spend less time on making the decision. The same argument applies to less stress. The shorter time the decision is in your mind, the less time you have to stress. Furthermore, as an example of last minute hurry, if you delay the decision up to a point where the current rental contract is about to expire you may have to pick a bad apartment. Coordination benefits could arise in the ad campaign example. The sooner you decide on the sub-elements of the campaign the sooner you can divide responsibilities to the team members and start planning the campaigns. It helps to build synergies if you know what other parts are included in the campaign.

Okay, what should I do then, you may ask.

Well, like in most cases, it really depends on the case. However, based on the elements in the previous lists, I came up with some attributes of decisions that should be made now and of those that should be delayed. These may help to choose when to choose.

Some attributes of decisions which should be done now and of those that should be delayed