Have you ever considered that the most dangerous decision is the one you've already made?
Not long ago, I was scheduled to preach at a church and already knew exactly what sermon I was going to preach.
At least, I thought I did.
Then the church gave me the theme for the event along with some additional context.
As soon as I heard it, another message came to mind...
one that fit what they were asking for much better.
It should have been an easy decision.
It wasn't.
I kept trying to figure out how to make my original sermon work.
I had already thought about preaching it.
I had mentally committed to it.
In my mind, that was the sermon.
The strange thing was that nobody at the church knew any of this.
I hadn't promised them that sermon.
Nobody was going to be disappointed if I changed it.
The commitment existed almost entirely in my own head.
And yet changing my mind somehow felt wrong.
Apparently, I had entered into a binding agreement with myself, and the negotiations were not going well.
Looking back afterward, the better decision seemed obvious.
That got me wondering:
Why was it so difficult to make a new decision when I had already made one?
Turns out, our brains aren't particularly good at this.
And it may be costing us more than we realize.
Understanding this helps us to see why there is often some drag on our optimization.
Let's walk through it...
Once You Decide, the Question Changes
Before I selected the sermon, my question was simple:
What should I preach?
I had several options and was trying to choose the best one.
But once I'd made the decision, something subtle happened. I wasn't asking that question anymore.
The question became:
Should I change what I've already decided to preach?
Those sound similar.
They're not.
In the first question, two options compete on relatively equal footing.
In the second, one option already belongs to me.
Psychologists have several concepts that help explain what happens here.
There's commitment bias... our tendency to remain consistent with a choice we've already made.
There's the sunk-cost effect. Once we've invested time, thought, money or energy into something, abandoning it feels like losing the investment.
There's also psychological ownership. An idea stops being an idea and becomes my idea. A plan becomes my plan.
And underneath all of this is something neuroscientists and psychologists call cognitive flexibility.
Cognitive flexibility is our ability to adjust our thinking and behavior when circumstances or information change.
Put all of that together and you get a surprisingly powerful mental trap:
After you've made a decision, you're no longer choosing between Option A and Option B. You're choosing between keeping your decision and changing your mind.
And changing your mind carries a psychological cost.
Apparently, our brains would sometimes rather defend a questionable decision than fill out the imaginary paperwork required to change it.
Your Brain Likes the Future You've Already Built
There's another piece to this.
Our brains are constantly anticipating what happens next.
Once we make a decision, we begin constructing a little model of the future around it.
I wasn't merely considering a sermon anymore.
I could see myself preaching it.
I'd thought through portions of it.
I knew where I was going.
The decision had removed uncertainty.
Then new information arrived.
Changing sermons meant tearing down the future I'd already constructed and building another one.
That's work.
So instead of reopening the decision, my brain did what brains often do:
It tried to preserve the existing plan.
“I can make this fit.”
“This is still a good sermon.”
“Maybe I had a reason for originally feeling like I should preach this.”
Pastors are particularly talented at this.
Give us enough time and three alliterated points, and we can make almost anything fit.
All of those statements might have been true.
But they weren't the right question.
The right question was:
Given what I know now, what is the best sermon for this assignment?
That's when I realized this wasn't really a sermon problem.
It was an optimization problem.
Optimization Requires Updating
We usually think poor decision-making means making bad decisions.
But there's another kind that may be much more common:
Failing to update a good decision after the circumstances change.
You made the best decision you could six months ago.
Fine.
Why should that automatically determine what you do today?
Pastors are surrounded by old decisions.
We meet on Tuesday because we decided to meet on Tuesday.
We hold this event every October because somebody decided years ago that we should hold this event every October.
We structure staff meetings this way because that's how we've structured staff meetings.
We personally handle a responsibility because, at some point, it made sense for us to handle it.
We answer email when it arrives.
We work out at a particular time.
We prepare sermons a certain way.
We keep a ministry program going.
And sometimes nobody remembers who made the original decision. At that point, it has achieved the highest level of church authority:
“We've always done it that way.”
None of those necessarily began as bad decisions.
That's what makes them dangerous.
A perfectly reasonable decision made in one season can quietly become an invisible constraint in another.
And because we're no longer consciously making the decision, we stop evaluating it.
Yesterday's decision becomes today's default.
Today's default becomes tomorrow's system.
And eventually we're spending enormous amounts of time and energy supporting decisions we wouldn't even make anymore.
Past Decisions Shouldn't Get Lifetime Appointments
This is one of the reasons optimization requires something more than discipline.
It requires cognitive flexibility.
You need to be able to update.
That doesn't mean becoming indecisive.
There's a huge difference between constantly second-guessing yourself and responding intelligently to new information (which may include a Holy Spirit directive).
Yep... for a pastor, the ability to update isn't merely an optimization principle...
...it's part of what it means to walk in the Spirit.
We preach about being sensitive to His leading, but that sensitivity requires being willing to loosen our grip on what we've already decided when God redirects us.
Strong leaders value consistency, and they should.
But sometimes we confuse consistency with refusing to update.
Suppose you make a decision on Tuesday based on everything you know.
On Thursday, you receive significant new information.
Changing your decision doesn't necessarily mean Tuesday's decision was wrong.
It may mean Thursday's decision is right.
Making yesterday's decision with today's information isn't consistency. It's irrationality.
An optimized pastor should be able to hold two thoughts simultaneously:
I made the best decision I could with the information I had.
And:
I would make a different decision with the information I have now.
There doesn't have to be any shame in the space between those two statements.
You are allowed to change your mind without issuing a press release.
How to Fix It: Try the Zero-Based Decision Question
I've found a simple question that helps expose this bias:
If I had not already made a decision, knowing everything I know right now, what would I choose?
Think about how powerful that question can be.
Your calendar
If none of these recurring meetings were already on my calendar, which ones would I schedule again?
Some meetings have survived longer than several denominations for no apparent reason.
Your ministry
If our church wasn't already doing this program, knowing what we know today, would we start it?
Your staff
If responsibilities hadn't already been divided this way, would I divide them this way now?
Your workday
If I were designing my workday from scratch, would I structure it like this?
Your health
If I weren't already following this diet, training routine or sleep strategy, would the evidence I have today cause me to choose it?
Your preaching
If I hadn't already selected this sermon or series, would I select it based on what I now know?
That last question would have helped me.
Instead of asking whether I should abandon the sermon I'd already chosen, I could have mentally erased the decision.
Now there are two sermons sitting on the table.
Here's the church.
Here's the theme.
Here's what I know.
Which one would I choose?
Suddenly the answer gets much clearer.
Don't Baptize Commitment Bias
For pastors, there's another wrinkle.
We can spiritualize our attachment to a decision.
“I really feel led this direction.”
“This is what I originally felt I was supposed to do.”
“I've already committed to it.”
Sometimes that's conviction.
Sometimes it's commitment bias.
Sometimes “I really feel led” means the Holy Spirit is leading. Sometimes it means I already made the PowerPoint.
Discernment matters here because Scripture certainly doesn't present changing your mind as an automatic virtue.
There are things about which we should be immovable.
Faithfulness requires steadfastness.
But steadfastness and stubbornness aren't the same thing.
Steadfastness refuses to move from what shouldn't change.
Wisdom is willing to change what should.
The challenge is knowing the difference.
Become Cheap to Update
Maybe one of the marks of an optimized leader is becoming psychologically cheap to update.
Not easily swayed.
Not indecisive.
Not endlessly reopening decisions that should remain closed.
Just willing to say:
“That was the right decision with the information I had Tuesday. It's Thursday now.”
New information gets a hearing.
Changed circumstances matter.
Better ideas are allowed to win.
And an old decision doesn't get extra voting power merely because you made it first.
There are probably decisions operating in your life right now that you haven't actually made in years.
They're still making decisions for you.
Your schedule.
Your routines.
Your ministry systems.
Your health habits.
Your leadership structure.
Maybe even the sermon you're planning to preach.
So occasionally clear the table and ask:
If I hadn't already decided, knowing what I know now, what would I choose?
You may discover that one of the biggest obstacles to your next good decision is a perfectly good decision you made yesterday.
Don't give an old decision voting rights it hasn't earned.
More Resources To Help You Optimize
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