Most firm leaders don’t think of themselves as uncertain. They think of themselves as careful, thoughtful, and diligent. When a decision feels hard, the instinct isn’t to rush. It’s to look for more input.

Another article. Another perspective. Another best practice. Another expert opinion.

It feels responsible. It feels professional. It feels like good judgment.

The default explanation is simple: important decisions require good information, and good information takes time to gather. Our legal training reinforces this. We’re taught to research thoroughly, anticipate counterarguments, and avoid blind spots. We learn to manage risk by reducing uncertainty. So, when uncertainty shows up, the reflex is to look for more information.

But more information isn’t always the solution.

At a certain point, additional input stops clarifying and starts obscuring. Advice accumulates faster than insight. Perspectives pile up without a shared frame. Instead of sharpening judgment, information overload fragments it.

This is where even experienced decision-makers can get stuck. Not because they lack intelligence, discipline, knowledge, or experience, but because they’re trying to think clearly inside a system with too many inputs competing for attention.

This is where the shift needs to happen.

The problem isn’t that you don’t have enough information. It’s that you haven’t filtered for what actually matters to this decision, in this context, right now. Without that filter, everything feels relevant. Everything competes for attention. Decision-making slows—not because of fear, but because the frame itself is overloaded.

Instead of asking, “What else should I read?” a more useful question is, “What information that I already have deserves my immediate attention, and what can I reasonably ignore?”

Answering that question requires judgment and experience, not more research.

Once you start looking at decisions through this lens, something important changes. You stop outsourcing clarity to search results and start trusting your ability to differentiate between what matters and what doesn’t. You move from consumption to interpretation. From gathering to deciding.

This is the kind of thinking we support at Gimbal Consulting. Not by giving leaders more content, but by helping them slow the frame, sharpen judgment, and work with the right information rather than all available information, so decisions move forward with confidence.

Progress doesn’t come from doing more. It comes from focusing on the things that truly deserve your attention.