An Hour-Long Lecture on the Psychology of Doing Nothing

​At the start of her recent lecture at Gresham College, Helga Drummond, a professor of decision sciences and author of a whole sub-library of books on the subject, offers two dueling proverbs:

He who hesitates is lost.

Fools rush in.

"Which is it?," Drummond asks. Or is it both? When is inaction action? And vice versa? When does caution become paralysis? When does emotion make us fuck up? And so on.

The talk, one of a number of great sort of anti-TED lectures presented by the college, goes deep on the above questions in mostly practical terms. Avoidance has costs; doing nothing has costs; postponing the future has costs. (See: the dentist.)

The point, ultimately, is that the future happens. Deal with it.