information gathering

how much research should you do before making a decision? the answer is almost never "all of it."

the diminishing returns curve

information gathering follows a steep diminishing returns curve. the first 30 minutes of research on a topic often gives you 70% of the useful information. the next 3 hours might give you another 20%. the remaining 10% could take days.

the question isn't "do i have enough information?" — you never will. the question is "will more information change my decision?"

the 70% rule

i aim to make decisions at roughly 70% information. that's enough to be directionally right without burning time on diminishing returns. for type 2 decisions, even 50% might be fine — just try it and course-correct.

for type 1 decisions, push closer to 85-90%. but never 100%. 100% is a fantasy, and waiting for it is its own form of risk.

failure modes

asking too many people — every new opinion adds noise. after 3-4 informed perspectives, more opinions usually just create confusion.
not distinguishing signal from noise — some information sources are much more valuable than others. one conversation with someone who's done the thing is worth 20 blog posts about the thing.

the best information sources

ranked by signal density:

doing the thing — nothing beats direct experience. often faster than research. if you can prototype or test cheaply, do that instead of researching. see vibe-coding for how this applies to software.
talking to someone who's done it — high bandwidth, can ask follow-up questions, they know what actually mattered vs what seemed important
case studies / postmortems — real outcomes, not theory
structured frameworks — models that help you think, not answers that tell you what to do
general advice — often too generic to be actionable. "it depends" is usually the honest answer.

when to stop gathering

signs you have enough information:

your decision hasn't changed with the last few inputs
you can articulate the key tradeoffs clearly
you know what you don't know, and you've decided it's acceptable not to know it
the cost of waiting is starting to exceed the cost of being slightly wrong

this connects to operation-optimization — information gathering is itself a process that can be optimized. don't just research the decision; optimize how you research.