But what happens if you fall in love with the wrong thing? If you find a product or company that’s too early—the supporting infrastructure isn’t there, the customers don’t exist, the leadership has a crazy vision and won’t budge.

What if you’re deeply passionate about quantum computing or synthetic biology or fusion energy or space exploration even though there’s no sign that any of those industries will bear fruit anytime soon?

Then screw it. Go for it. If you love it, don’t worry about all my advice, don’t worry about the timing.

Your company is an organism; its cells need to divide to multiply, they need to differentiate to become something new. Don’t worry about what you’re going to lose—think about what you’re going to become.

If you don’t know whether you passed or failed, you … wait and see? This is not the way the “sure-thing principle” is supposed to behave. It’s as if our businessman had decided to wait until after the election to buy his property, despite being willing to make the purchase regardless of the outcome.

Tversky and Shafir’s study shows us that uncertainty—even irrelevant uncertainty—can paralyze us.

The key is to remember that imagined choices don’t actually exist, because they’re not actionable. We’re not trying to live a fantasy life; we’re trying to design a real and livable life. If we burdened ourselves with knowing everything about our decisions and discovering every option possible (which, of course, you should do if you’re going to make “the best choice”), we’d never decide. In life design we know that there are countless possibilities but aren’t stymied by that fact. We revel in exploring a few possibilities, then taking action by starting with a choice.

Even when we get the big decisions directionally right, we’re not guaranteed to get the results we want.

We don’t think of ordinary moments as decisions. No one taps us on the shoulder as we react to a comment by a coworker to tell us that we’re about to pour gasoline or water onto this flame.