Give It Five Minutes
A short delay can stop costly reactions before they turn into rework.
"When angry, count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred."
— Thomas Jefferson
Fast decisions can feel like strong leadership. They often create slow problems.
A customer sends a frustrating note. A team member makes a mistake. A new idea sounds wrong on first hearing. So you answer right away, shut it down, or change direction before you really understand what is happening. That quick reaction feels efficient, but it often creates cleanup work, damaged trust, or conversations that never needed to happen.
Pressure makes this worse. Small business owners make dozens of calls each day, so it is easy to trust the first answer that comes to mind. But your first answer is often based on stress, pride, or incomplete facts. When that happens, you do not save time. You just move the cost to later in the week.
Jason Fried, co-founder of Basecamp, once pushed back immediately on an idea from conference founder Richard Saul Wurman. Wurman replied with a simple line: “Man, give it five minutes.” Fried later said that advice taught him the difference between reacting to defend a position and pausing to understand it.
The lesson is not to become slow or indecisive. It is to create a small gap between trigger and response, because that gap gives better thinking a chance to show up.
Action Step: Today, pick one decision that usually gets an instant response, like pricing pushback, a refund request, or a team mistake. Write a two-line rule for it: what facts must be true before you respond, and what you will not do while annoyed or rushed. Do not send the reply until you have checked your rule.
Good judgment is rarely about having perfect instincts. It is more often about building a simple pause that keeps bad instincts from running the day.
That pause can be five minutes, one written note, or one clarifying question. Small delays like that do not slow a business down. They prevent small mistakes from becoming expensive ones.