"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

~Mike Tyson

The most difficult thing about making decisions when things are going sideways is often we can't afford to wait until things slow down enough to gather a ton of data and make an informed decision.

This framework will help you avoid paralysis, minimize the effects of bad decisions, get you to the best available decision as fast as possible, and help you iterate to better decisions quickly.

The key is: set a time limit for each step and then honor it. The actual amount of time you have to make a decision will be different depending on what exactly you're facing, but setting hard limits will help minimize paralysis of analysis.

1. Pause

The best time to take time is when you can't afford to take time. Even if you're only able to take a single deep breath, do it. Any gap you can give yourself between fight or flight and rational decision making will help in the next steps.

2. Prioritize

Crises often don't show up alone, so take a moment to triage and prioritize what's in front of you. The fastest way to get overwhelmed is to tackle everything at once, so choose the most pressing one and focus.

3. Gather data

Gather information and possible solutions, but don't fall into the trap of thinking you can get a "complete" data set. If you have the time, solicit the opinions of others.

4. Choose and Move

Decision time. It feels counterintuitive, but ANY action is better than no action at all, so choose and move.

5. Evaluate

Set a pause point to check in. Is the plan working? Keep going. Does it need tweaking, or is it not working at all? Go back to the top of the framework.

Repeat until the crisis has past and all problems are mitigated.