A loop opens when you're asked to do or decide something, and it closes when you complete the task or make the decision. When I think about senior leaders and engineers I respect a lot, what unites them is the ability to close loops quickly. Make the wrong choice and quickly observe evidence that changes your mind; make the right one and on to the next one. I've seen this show up in three major ways:

• Decisions: Ponder a decision for too long, and you get attached to it. The attachment makes you less likely to revert once you observe that it doesn't work. It's like cognitive sunk cost fallacy that prevents you from making the right decision.

• Tasks: Task require context, and especially if it's context you don't hold in your mind all of the time, it takes time to load that context into your brain. Finishing the task the first time around matters, because it saves you the time between the work + the time it takes to load context every single time, N times.

• Communication: Getting a message and not writing back immediately makes that message buffer in the back of your brain, you come back to it again and again. Why not reply immediately? You never have to think about it again. Don't know what to say? You can always defer to a later time, make a note in your calendar, and move on.

After realizing this a few months ago, I've been trying to make decisions more quickly and I've seen the benefits accumulate: less time thinking about every specific decision when they are fairly clear, more time to observe their effects. And since I make decisions more quickly, revising them doesn't hurt at all.

Closing loops quickly is a superpower.