Pivot

 In Lean Startup, by Eric Reis, he describes how a startup enterprise, or any group effort that is navigating unknown territory, such as trying to find the right product-market fit for a new innovation. He outlines, for a given plan or proposal, how to identify your assumptions and craft a series of experiments to test or validate those assumptions. As you learn more about the assumptions and their validity, you make more informed decisions about the proposed plan, such as whether to persevere or perform a course correction.

The same principle applies when you're faced with career or other major life decisions. Will you find this new job opportunity implicitly satisfying? Should you change your college major or focus of study? Will John be a good father to our children?

Flesh out these proposed plans a bit. Put some "meat on those bones." What things do you find implicitly satisfying? How do you know that this new job opportunity will provide those things?If you are extrapolating that your experience in one area that you find satisfying will be just like another area in which you have no experience, how are those areas different? How can you reasonably make that extrapolation? How can you test that extrapolation?

If you are relying on hearsay evidence, make a note of that. That is an area that you need to test to get some real evidence that you can trust is applicable to your situation.

If you don't you are just gambling. You are speculating, placing bets and crossing your fingers. Can you really afford to trust the outcome of this decision to a role of the dice? Probably not.

Do yourself a favor:

1. Identify your assumptions or other unknowns.
2. Decide your your level of uncertainty about an assumption. If you are 100% certain (be honest, now), then you have 0% uncertainty. If you have absolutely no idea, not even a guess, then you have 100% uncertainty. Just take a guess at your level of uncertainty for values in between. Round to the nearest 10%. Call this value "X".
3. What would it cost you if that assumption turned out to be incorrect? No, you don't have arrive at a dollar value for non-monetary decisions. But find a metric that you can use to compare with the cost of other options if they were wrong. For example, how many hours, days, or years would it take you to clean up the mess? That cleanup time could be a good metric for the cost if these various assumptions turned out to be wrong. Call this value "Y".
4. Arrive a Likely Cost if Incorrect (LCI) for each assumption. LCE = X * Y. That is, the relative probability that you are wrong times the cost of being wrong.
5. Organize these assumptions in descending order of LCI, largest value first.

This list represents the priority by which you need to gain insight into the assumption you are making.

Start with the top of the list as the most import assumption to test and craft the cheapest possible way to test it. In the case of that job opportunity, can you do any volunteer work that mimics that opportunity? Can you try that volunteer opportunity before you have to make a decision about the job opportunity? (Are you sure? If your volunteer opportunity is not that similar to the new job opportunity, then testing the assumption this way gets you no useful evidence.)

Repeat this testing process for each of the assumptions in your list.

At some point, you might come to realize that one of your assumptions was completely wrong. This proposed plan is not a good idea. So you can abandon that plan or pivot, adjust it in such a way as to avoid the bad assumption, and test again.

You don't have to test all of your assumptions. But once you've tested enough to gain confidence in the course ahead, do it.

Now, ideally, you should always have a Plan B ready to execute. You decide to execute Plan A. What if it goes wrong. Think about Plan B now, not later.

Yes, that's a late pivot. But better to pivot late than to blithely drive off the cliff.