Welcome to Radhika's newsletter INTENT: a bi-weekly guide for high achievers who want an extraordinary life. Each issue brings you real stories, practical strategies, and the intention behind how we work, lead, grow, and live.

Quick tea update: I’ve been on a rotation between date matcha lattes, dandy lattes, and miel latte every now and then.

And yes, I spent way too long deciding everyday which one I actually want. Which, as you’ll see in a second, is very on theme with today’s topic.

Last week, my sister had exactly two days to move into her new apartment. The timeline where you’d assume every decision gets made fast because, well, it has to.

Day one: we drove to IKEA. We looked at every single bed frame they have. She didn’t love any of them. Cool. So we walked through the showroom again. And again. We were there for an hour and a half and walked out with nothing.

So we drove to a second store. Didn’t love anything. Drove to a third store. Didn’t love anything there either. Each one had something she “kinda liked but wasn’t sure about.” Each one came with a fresh round of but-what-if-the-other-one-was-better.

By the end of day one, she had: zero beds, sore feet, a mildly cranky sister (hi, that’s me), and the exact same problem she started the morning with.

Day two: the deadline was breathing down her neck or else she’d be without a car or a family to help her assemble. We drove back to IKEA. To one of the bed frames she had already looked at the day before. She bought it in fifteen minutes.

It’s a perfectly nice bed. She likes it. She would probably tell you it’s the right call. The problem was never the bed. The bed was always going to be fine. What wasn’t fine was the day and a half of mental energy, exhaustion, and second-guessing it took to get there.

And here’s the part I have to be honest about: I do this too. I’m a recovering perfectionist 😅. The idea that there’s one right answer and a bunch of wrong ones is hardwired into how I think. Letting that go is genuinely hard for me. But the older I get and the more I watch myself (and the people around me) lose hours and weeks and years to indecision, the more I’m convinced of something I want to actually say out loud in this newsletter:

Perfect decisions don’t exist.

That’s the whole thing. The sooner we accept it, the more of our lives we get back.

I see this everywhere. Three stories I can’t stop thinking about:

I have a friend who, from the very first time I met him, told me he wanted to invest in real estate. Three years ago. 3!

Every three or four months, like clockwork, I get a text: “Hey, quick question… when you bought yours, did you do X or Y?” I answer. He says thank you. He disappears. Nothing happens. Three months later, another question. Same loop.

He’s not lazy. He’s not unmotivated. He’s informed and he probably knows more about the market than I do at this point. He just can’t pull the trigger because no deal looks “perfect.”

Meanwhile, three years of appreciation, equity, tax benefits, learning by doing, all of it has quietly walked past him while he waited for certainty that was never going to come.

This one happened at work and I’m still thinking about it.

One of our partners made a big announcement. There was a clear window to launch an AI initiative on the back of it. A leader I work closely with knew this. They wanted to move on it. They were the right person to drive it.

But they wanted to get it exactly right. Wording. Positioning. The deck. The plan. Approvals. Another round of feedback. Then another.

A week and a half went by. By the time they were ready to launch, another team had already launched their version, gotten traction, and was now driving the strategy for the entire space. The window was closed. Not because the original idea was worse but because someone else moved first while the perfect plan was still being polished.

In tech, in business, and in life, speed is its own kind of strategy.

I recently hired someone. From “I need to hire” to “offer signed” was a matter of weeks. I put real effort into the interviews. I asked good questions. I made the best call I could with the information I had. Now I’m focused on training them well.

Meanwhile, I’ve watched peers sit on the same open role for four, five months. They’re not lazy either. They’re searching for the candidate who matches every single box: the unicorn who needs zero ramp-up, has the perfect background, fits the team perfectly on the first try.

That person doesn’t exist. And while they’re searching, the team is burning out, the work is piling up, and the role is quietly costing the company way more than a slightly-imperfect hire ever would.

It’s almost always better to put real effort into the decision, make the best call you can, and then invest in making it work than to wait for the perfect option that never shows up.

1. I deeply respect people who decide quickly based on the information they have. Not recklessly. Not without thinking. But who can take in what’s in front of them, weigh it, and move. That’s a rare skill to have.

2. The higher up you go, the more complex decisions get and the faster you have to make them. This used to confuse me. I assumed “more important” meant “more time.” It’s actually the opposite. The most senior people I admire don’t sit on things. They gather what they can, decide, communicate clearly, and adjust as new info comes in. The decision-making muscle is the thing that scales.

3. Practice on the small stuff so the big stuff doesn’t break you. The grocery store is my favorite training ground for this. Pick a brand. Pick a fruit. Pick a snack. Move. If you can’t make a 30-second decision about almond butter, you are not going to magically become decisive when a real life choice shows up.

We obsess over the cost of the wrong choice. We almost never sit with the cost of not choosing at all. Here’s what’s actually piling up while you “keep thinking”:

That last one compounds. Indecision is one of the few things that gets harder the more you practice it.

These days I run almost every decision through a three-step framework I borrowed from Greg McKeown’s book Essentialism (Highly recommend reading it.) Three steps, in order:

1. Explore. Put every real option on the table. All of them. Don’t pre-filter. Don’t sneak-eliminate the ones you’re scared of. Look at each one with curious, honest eyes, not anxious ones. This is the only step where I let myself fully open the floodgates.

2. Eliminate. This is the step most people skip and it’s the most important. McKeown’s rule (and now mine): if it isn’t a clear, enthusiastic yes, it’s a no. A lukewarm maybe is always a no wearing a polite costume. Most options collapse here once you’re honest with yourself. The list gets short, fast.

3. Execute. This is the most important one in the whole framework. Once the decision is made, I’m done deliberating. I clear my brain of every other option that was ever on the table. The other apartment, the other job, the other vendor, the other outfit - gone. They no longer exist in my head. The decision I just made is the one I’m executing on, and I stay fully satisfied with it.

That last part is what separates the people who decide once and move from the people who keep secretly reopening their own choices for weeks and months. That second group exhausts themselves and doesn’t even realize it. Half the energy of the original decision goes right back into wondering if it was the right one.

Once you commit — commit. Move forward. Stay satisfied with the call you made. Trust the version of you who made it.

The whole thing usually takes me a fraction of the time my old “let me think about it for two weeks” method used to. The decisions are usually better, because they’re made from clarity instead of from exhaustion.

This is the reminder I have to say to myself out loud sometimes:

Most decisions are reversible. The bed can be returned. The job can be left. The dress can be exchanged. The investment can be rebalanced. The hire can be coached or, worst case, exited. The “yes” can become a “no” later if you really need it to.

For the small stuff, speed is almost always better than certainty. Pick. Move. Adjust if needed.

For the genuinely irreversible stuff: who you marry, having a kid, big permanent moves, yes, take real time. Sit with those. But notice how few of your daily decisions actually fall into that bucket. Most of what we agonize over isn’t permanent. It just feels permanent because we’re holding it so tightly.

Saying “perfect decisions don’t exist” doesn’t mean be reckless. It means: do your honest best with the information in front of you, commit, and then spend your energy making the decision work instead of spending it second-guessing whether it was the right one.

Pick one decision you’ve been sitting on for longer than it deserves. The property. The career move. The conversation. Then this week:

Give yourself a deadline. This week. Reply and tell me what you picked. I read every single one and I’d love to hear how this plays out for you!

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Your commitment to living with purpose is exactly why this space exists. Can’t wait to share more in the next edition!

Until next time,
Radhika
Creating a life of purpose, wealth, and growth

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