The Paralysis of Choice
We are drowning in options. Every new project starts with a week of research instead of a week of coding. A reflection on decision fatigue and the virtue of being boring.
It happens every time I start a new side project. The initial spark of inspiration is pure, exciting, and untarnished by reality. I have a problem to solve, a user to help, or just a weird idea I want to see exist in the world. I can see the finished product in my mind's eye—the smooth animations, the responsive layout, the database schema perfectly normalized. I open my terminal, type `mkdir new-idea`, and then... I freeze.
Which framework should I use? Next.js is the industry standard, but I've been hearing great things about Remix and its mutation model. Svelte 5 just dropped and the signals API looks incredibly clean—maybe this is the time to learn it? But wait, what about the backend? Should I go serverless with Cloudflare Workers to get that edge latency, or stick to a long-running Node server for simpler WebSocket support? What database? Postgres is reliable, but maybe a document store fits the data model better? Or perhaps SQLite on the edge with Turso?
The cursor blinks. The directory remains empty. I open a new tab and search "Next.js vs Remix 2026 performance benchmarks." Two hours later, I am reading a heated debate on Hacker News about the merits of ORMs versus raw SQL. Four hours later, I am watching a YouTube tutorial on configuring a monorepo build system.
The sun sets. I have written zero lines of code. I have solved zero problems for my users. But I have accumulated a wealth of anxieties about technologies I haven't even installed yet.
We are drowning in options. Every new project starts with a week of research instead of a week of coding. We call it "due diligence," but it is often just procrastination wearing a suit.
The "Best Tool" Fallacy
We obsess over finding the "best" tool for the job. We act as if software engineering is a game of rock-paper-scissors where choosing the wrong framework means automatic defeat. We treat our tech stack like a load-bearing wall in a skyscraper, terrified that if we choose the wrong state management library today, the entire structure will collapse three years from now.
But for 99% of the software we build, the "best" tool is irrelevant. The bottlenecks are rarely technical; they are product and distribution. Users don't care if your site is hydrated, island-architected, or server-rendered. They don't care if you used Tailwind or CSS Modules. They care if it loads reasonably fast and solves their problem.
By seeking the local maximum of technical perfection, we miss the global maximum of actually shipping something. We optimize for a scale we will never reach and for problems we don't yet have. We build microservices for a user base of one. We configure Kubernetes clusters for a blog. We are solving imaginary problems to avoid facing the real one: building something people want.
Case Study: The Great State Management War
Let's look at a concrete example: state management in React. In 2016, Redux was the law. You wrote your actions, your reducers, your sagas. It was verbose, but it was standard. Then came the backlash. "Redux is too much boilerplate!" screamed the community.
So we moved to the Context API. But then we worried about performance and unnecessary re-renders. So we looked at Recoil. But Recoil felt abandoned. So we looked at Jotai. Then Zustand. Then Signals. Then React Query for server state and Context for UI state.
Imagine you started a project in 2019 and spent two weeks evaluating state libraries. You picked the "best" one at the time. By 2021, it was considered "legacy." By 2023, it was deprecated.
The developer who picked standard React `useState` and prop drilling in 2019? They are still shipping features. Their code is readable. It might not be "optimal," but it survived the churn. The developer who chased the "best" solution is currently rewriting their entire data layer for the third time.
The Hidden Cost of Evaluation
There is a hidden tax on "trying out" new technology. It feels productive because we are learning. We tell ourselves that spending three days configuring a new build tool is an investment in our career capital. "I'm staying relevant," we whisper to ourselves as we debug a Webpack config for the fortieth time.
But in the context of building a product, this "learning" is a liability. Every new tool you introduce brings a non-zero amount of cognitive overhead. You have to learn its API, its quirks, its error messages, and its edge cases. You have to figure out how to deploy it and how to debug it when it breaks in production.
Context Switching
When you use a stack you know, your fingers do the thinking. You don't have to tab out to the documentation to remember how to declare a route or connect to the database. You stay in the flow state where the problem is the focus, not the syntax. You move at the speed of thought.
The "New Thing" Tax
When you adopt the shiny new framework, you become an unpaid beta tester. You will hit bugs that have no StackOverflow answers. You will write GitHub issues that go unanswered. You are paying for the novelty with your time—time that could be spent building features.
The Psychological Safety of "Research"
Why do we do this? Why do we voluntarily enter this paralysis? I believe it's because "researching" feels like work, but it carries no risk of failure.
As long as I am comparing database paradigms, I cannot fail at building my product. I cannot write a bug. I cannot launch to crickets. I am safe in the theoretical realm where everything is perfect and performance is O(1).
Building is scary. It exposes our limitations. It forces us to make compromises. It subjects our ideas to the harsh light of reality. Evaluating tools is safe. It allows us to feel smart and discerning without actually producing anything of value. It is a defense mechanism against the vulnerability of creation.
The Virtue of Being Boring
There is a profound freedom in choosing "boring" technology. Rails, Django, Laravel, or just a plain React SPA with a Node backend. These stacks are boring because they are solved. The edge cases have been smoothed over by a decade of collective suffering.
When you choose boring tech, you front-load the decision-making. You make one big decision ("I will use the stack I know") so you can make thousands of small decisions about your product without friction. You aren't fighting your tools; you are standing on their shoulders.
Innovation tokens are real. You only get a few per project. If you spend them on your build system, your ORM, and your CSS framework, you have none left for the actual product features that might differentiate you in the market. Spend your innovation tokens on your unique value proposition, not on your infrastructure.
My Rule of Thumb
Over the years, I've developed a rule to combat this paralysis. When I start a new project, I force myself to use the stack I used on my last project, unless the requirements are fundamentally different.
"But that stack is old!" I scream internally. "It uses Webpack! It doesn't have Server Actions!"
"Shut up," I tell myself. "It works."
By sticking to a known quantity, I can set up the environment in 30 minutes. I have my snippets. I know the folder structure. I know how to deploy it. I bypass the entire "Evaluation Phase" and go straight to the "Building Phase."
If, later down the line, I hit a genuine wall—performance is too slow, or I need a specific feature that isn't supported—then, and only then, do I consider a migration. And you know what? 95% of the time, I never hit that wall.
Breaking the Cycle
So how do we break the paralysis? We need to separate "learning" from "building."
If your goal is to learn Rust, build a toy app in Rust and expect it to be slow and painful. That's the point. But if your goal is to launch a SaaS, use the tools you could use in your sleep. Don't conflate your education with your entrepreneurship.
Next time you feel the paralysis setting in, ask yourself: "Am I blocked by technology, or am I blocked by the fear of making something that might fail?" Usually, it's the latter. And no amount of architecture research will solve that.
Pick a stack. Any stack. Pick the one you used last week. Pick the one your friend uses. Pick the one that has the best mascot. It doesn't matter as much as you think. What matters is that you stop evaluating and start creating.
"The perfect stack is the one that lets you ship."