ActionaryThings to do to your workAll operations

Defer

Hand the decision over and obey the answer; no taking it back, even when you dislike it.

Cage composing by coin toss.

Seen in John Cage, Music of Changes, 1951

Try it on your work

With your hands

Take the choice you are about to make, write each option on its own slip, and seal them away where you will find them in one week. Do other work. When the week is up, open them, and notice which option you had already started living toward.

In words

State the open question aloud once, clearly, and then forbid yourself from answering it for three days. On day three, write the answer in one sentence; it usually pre-exists.

In the process

Mark one decision in your plan as "decided last." Rebuild the plan so everything that can proceed without it does, until only that decision remains. See how much smaller it got.

How it has been used

Give the decision away: to a coin, a passer-by, a rule, the weather. Composers have thrown dice since Mozart's day. The move forbids taking the decision back when you dislike the answer: the whole operation is in the obeying, not the asking.

Where it leads

Grouped under Move the decision or responsibility

Open in the explorerFind one for your situationTried it? Tell me how it wentKnow a better example?