Allegory for something
You have two unmarked keys and one of them unlocks the front door. There aren’t any distinguishing marks on either one, but you look at the keys and try to guess which is right anyway. You have trouble choosing, since there is no way to choose, but eventually one feels right, and you go with that one.
Even if it is the correct key, this still took longer than if you had confidently attempted to unlock the door with the first key that randomly happened to be in your hand, because that has a 50 percent change of success and if it fails, you know for sure the other one is correct.
The person in the first example cannot confidently do something that has a 50 percent chance of failing, and so they equivocate, second-guess and over-think. This offers them no more information, and thus they have the same rate of failure; worse, they took longer to arrive at the very same conclusion, putting them behind the second person.
The second person who fearlessly charges forward into a situation where the odds are 50/50 (with an eventual guarantee of success), knowing that even a single thought about the situation will do nothing but slow them down.
I suppose this is where the phrase “Just Do It” came from.
4 years ago