When good advice contradicts good advice • Look before you leap. • He who hesitates is lost. Both are familiar sayings. Both have been passed down through generations. But they seem to offer opposite advice. So which one should we follow? It depends. Sometimes we need to act quickly. Sometimes we need to stop and think. The difficult part is judging which advice applies to the situation we're facing. There's a proverb for almost everything A few more examples: • Many hands make light work. • Too many cooks spoil the broth. Should we involve more people or fewer? • Absence makes the heart grow fonder. • Out of sight, out of mind. Does distance strengthen a relationship or weaken it? • Nothing ventured, nothing gained. • Better safe than sorry. Should we take the risk or avoid it? Each saying may contain something useful. But the circumstances matter. A proverb that offers good advice in one situation may offer poor advice in another. Are we using the proverb to judge, or to justify? Here's something worth considering. Suppose we've already decided to act quickly. He who hesitates is lost. That sounds reassuring. It supports our decision. But suppose we've decided to wait. Look before you leap. That sounds equally sensible. In both cases, we can find a familiar saying that supports what we've already decided. And because these sayings have been around for generations, we may give them considerable weight. After all, if people have repeated a proverb for hundreds of years, surely there must be some wisdom in it? Perhaps there is. But its age and familiarity don't tell us whether it applies to our particular circumstances. We may even mistake finding a proverb that supports our decision for finding good reasons to make that decision. And we may do this without realising it. What about the opposite advice? One way to examine our judgment is to consider the opposite proverb. If we're telling ourselves He who hesitates is lost, we might ask: What would make ‘Look before you leap’ the better advice? Perhaps the consequences of a mistake are serious. Perhaps we have time to gather more information. Perhaps the opportunity isn't as urgent as we first thought. Or perhaps acting quickly really is the better choice. The point isn't that we should always hesitate, or always act. It's that considering the opposite advice may help us notice something we've overlooked. A few questions worth asking When a familiar saying comes to mind, we might ask: • Why does this proverb seem appropriate here? • What circumstances would make the opposite advice more useful? • What might I be overlooking? • Am I using this proverb to help me make a judgment, or to justify one I've already made? We don't need to stop using proverbs. They can offer useful reminders of lessons learned through experience. But we should be careful about giving them more authority than they deserve. A proverb may contain wisdom. Knowing when to apply that wisdom requires judgment.

“Time is money”