What Should I Do Next?

Criteria for deciding how much planning/research is optimal:

• Payoff varies widely among different options.
• Probability of randomly choosing high payoff options is low.
• Planning/research has a high probability of leading to high payoff options.
• Cost of planning/research is great enough to negate the benefit of choosing high payoff options.
• There exists significant side benefits to the planning/research.

Ideas adapted from a lecture slide Barry Boehm in CSCI 510 called "Conditions for Successful Prototyping (or Other Info-Buying).

On the other hand, there is always the "Do something even if it is wrong idea" which points out that you can spend so much time considering alternatives that you never actually end up doing anything at all.