Think of the last time you picked where to eat on a trip.
Was it good?
If it was, I bet you did a little research first, compared a couple of options, and then the part people forget: took risk and actually picked something. Sit there too long and the afternoon is gone. The decision you don't make costs you the thing you can't get back.
Design is mostly that, over and over.
When you don't decide, someone (or something) else does. Sometimes that's fine, you can't own every call, and a sensible default beats a stalled team. But your job, the reason you're in the room, is to own the decisions that matter, so people around you don't have to keep asking them. Decide it once, well, and you free a dozen other people to spend their minds elsewhere.
I love best practices. Best practices are where you start, never where you finish. Search "[thing] best practice" and you'll get a decent answer in a second, which is exactly why everybody else will do the same. But every default came from someone who once stood where you're standing, with no reference and a decision to make. That's you now. Borrow what helps, change what doesn't. And hold it loosely.
The honest take on any good decision is "this is how we go, given what we know today." When what you know changes, the call changes
Don't burn energy pre-solving problems you don't have yet. Most of them never show up.
Stuck between two options? Pull someone else in. Two brains beat a stuck one.
Get good at this and you get more valuable, plainly. A good call tends to mean a bigger result for less effort. Most of strategy, underneath the word, is just that: deciding well, early, and staying willing to be wrong.
