---
title: "Making a decision in 4 seconds (or: How to know what you *really* want to do)"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/9/20/making-a-decision-in-4-seconds-or-how-to-know-what-you-reall.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/9/20/making-a-decision-in-4-seconds-or-how-to-know-what-you-reall.html"
published: "2003-09-20T10:28:00"
updated: "2003-09-20T10:28:00"
tags: ["Off Topic"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Need to decide between two things and it's really hard to make the decision? Here's a quick way to understand what you really really want to choose: Take a coin to flip Decide in advance which side represents each…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Making a decision in 4 seconds (or: How to know what you \*really\* want to do)

By Roy Osherove September 20, 2003 In [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

**Historical article** · Originally published September 20, 2003; technical details may be outdated.

Need to decide between two things and it's really hard to make the decision? Here's a quick way to understand what you **really really** want to choose:

- Take a coin to flip
- Decide in advance which side represents each decision
- Promise yourself that whatever the coin falls onto, you'll respect that decision
- Now throw the coin and let it fall on the floor
- Watch which side is up
- Do you feel the urge to re-throw the coin so you'll get the other decision, or do you want to just start doing it?
- Now you know what you **really** want to do.

## More in Off Topic

[All posts in Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

- Sep 21, 2003

    ### [Where did the desktops disappear?](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/9/21/where-did-the-desktops-disappear.html)

- Sep 21, 2003

    ### [Looking for a reporting solution for .Net](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/9/21/looking-for-a-reporting-solution-for-net.html)

- Sep 17, 2003

    ### [XP is still widely unknown black magic](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/9/17/xp-is-still-widely-unknown-black-magic.html)

- Sep 14, 2003

    ### [Interesting research](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/9/14/interesting-research.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/