Confucius spent years trying to get rulers to act on his advice — and almost none of them did. What he noticed, recorded in the Analects, was that advisors consistently misjudged which decisions were still open versus which had already been made in the ruler's mind. They argued logic at people who had already committed emotionally, and then wondered why good reasoning failed. This is a real and underappreciated decision-making error: we treat choices as still live when they've quietly closed. The moment someone has told a story about why they're doing something — even just to themselves — the calculation has shifted from 'what is true?' to 'what confirms what I've decided?' Catching this in yourself means noticing not just what you're weighing, but whether you've already privately picked a winner and are now just assembling the jury.

Think of a decision you're currently 'still considering' — have you actually already made it?

Drawing from Confucianism — Confucius