Finding Signal With Counterfactual Thinking
At any moment in time, there's an infinite amount of things that one could be doing.
There's also a much smaller set of the reasonably good things that one could be doing to advance one's own goals.
There's one thing, though, that is always a waste of time: consuming and acting upon incorrect information.
Most opinions are often stated as fact (since there's no incentive to properly nuance one's speech), but very few things in this complex world we live in are actually measurable and indisputably true.
The rest is opinion and superstition, in the best of cases, and outright misinformation and charlatanism, in the worst of cases.
Actually follow through the thought process until it's grounded in evidence and facts that don't depend upon opinion or interpretation.
For example, an usual excuse for not doing X is in the lines of “what if Y occurs?”. Well, has actually Y actually ever happened in the past? What's the frequency of Y in the population of people that done X? And in the unlikely event that Y happens, what does it take, in concrete material terms, to bear it?
I think that an useful mental device for any decision is counterfactual thinking.
Usually you have two options; (i) do X; and (ii) do nothing;
For each of these actions, there's a distribution of outcomes that you can intuitively estimate. Namely, ask yourself “What will most likely happen if I do X?” and “What will most likely happen if I do nothing?”.
If it's still not clear what you should do, estimate the worst and best outcomes for each of the options. Concretely considering “what's the worst that can happen?” often helps concretely lay out surprisingly acceptable risks and outcomes.
This thinking device can be enhanced further by considering the outcomes, leading to a 2-by-2 matrix.
On each row, what you have direct control over: (i) do X; and (ii) do nothing;
On each column, an unknown: (a) Y happens; and (b) Y doesn't happen.
For each cell, honestly consider how much of your action has an influence on Y happening.
If you can't substantially influence the outcome Y, you don't have control over it, let it go.
If Y is some undesirable outcome and you can mitigate the bad at some trivial effort or cost, do X.
If the worst that can happen is negligible in cost or probability, do it anyway and accept it.