Frank Partnoy begins his book Wait: The Art and Science of Delay with a story about the world-famous tennis player Jimmy Connors. Psychologists interested in how we receive and process information and make decisions had devised a brilliant experiment:  they measured how long it took top-ranked tennis players to return a serve. For most players, this typically took 500 milliseconds; 300 milliseconds were spent watching the opponent’s windup and serve, then deciding how to return, and the remaining 200 milliseconds were spent executing the return. Jimmy Connors, however, took a full 400 milliseconds to decide and only 100 milliseconds to execute his return. He used that extra 100 milliseconds to absorb and process more information and make a better decision. It obviously worked, but if you don’t believe the numbers, photos of Connors standing on the baseline waiting to receive a serve say it all — his eyes are as big as pie plates as he is sucking in as much information as he possibly can.  

Portnoy’s study found that people in disciplines ranging from sports to neuroscience, psychology, and business make better decisions when they take the time to think more deeply about a problem. And better decision-making means reducing errors, mitigating risk, and capitalizing on opportunities. In recommending “strategic delay,” rather than reactive decision-making, Portnoy makes a compelling argument for waiting and deliberation — for procrastination — as an effective decision-making method, rather than just a bad habit. He concludes, "The essence of my case is this: given the fast pace of modern life, most of us tend to react too quickly. We don’t, or can’t, take enough time to think about the increasingly complex timing challenges we face."

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What was really going on with that developer?

It took me a few years to understand why my boss’s decision-making seemed so arbitrary and out of sync with my training and experience. I was focused on hitting milestones on a paper schedule, but he was concerned with the quality of the physical product that he hoped to sell. He had architectural training and had been a homebuilder for many years, so he had a good eye for what looked right and appealed to home buyers.  For him, any opportunity to make little adjustments before the doors opened was a chance to improve the quality of the project, which would raise prices, accelerate sales, reduce risk, and increase his chances of success. He was difficult to work for, but when you see it from his perspective — as the signatory and guarantor on the loan — you can understand why he would wait as long as possible to make important decisions. 

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Another Story

During the thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, in October 1962, United States President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev faced off in a conflict considered the closest mankind has come to nuclear war.  After secretly installing missiles on the Island of Cuba, Khrushchev found himself pressured on one side by Kennedy, who demanded that he remove the missiles immediately, and on the other by his Politburo, who wanted the US to remove missiles from Turkey in exchange. On the evening of day 11, Khrushchev used a private backchannel courier to send Kennedy a conciliatory letter suggesting a simple, diplomatic way out of the crisis: He would remove the missiles from Cuba as a first step, leaving open the possibility of discussing the US missiles in the future. Less than a day later, while Kennedy and his advisors were still deliberating on how to respond, Khrushchev sent a second, more aggressive and confrontational letter issuing his own demand that the US remove its missiles from Turkey.  As the president and his advisors discussed what to do, the President’s brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, made a brilliant yet simple proposal: Reply to the first letter. His logic was insightful and strategic: “The important point was to avoid, at all costs, responding to the second message. If, on the other hand, we responded to the first message, it would be very difficult for them not to accept. No other course of action seemed possible.” And that’s what they did.