You are a product of your Decisions!

It's the final set of the championship match. You're 5-6 down on your serve and it's deuce. Your opponent is 2 points away from taking the trophy. What and where do you choose to serve? Do you go aggressive or play defensive? It's all about these small decisions which take you to victory or cost you the championship. When I was playing tennis, I learned something early: matches are not lost because you hit a bad shot, they’re lost because you hesitated right before you hit it. That split-second of doubt between “should I go down the line or play safe crosscourt” decides the point more often than your technique does.

And honestly? Building a startup feels exactly the same. Winners aren't those who never make mistakes, they are those who make decisions faster, learn faster, and recover faster.

Every day, founders are making hundreds of calls, who to hire, what feature to drop, which investor to say yes or no to. And most of us are never formally trained to make decisions. We just wing it and hope instinct kicks in. But here’s the truth I’ve seen both on the court and in business:

You don’t rise to the occasion. You fall to the level of your training.

Great decision-making isn’t about IQ, luck, or even experience. It’s a skill you train, just like athletes do. They run scenario drills, visualise situations, and condition their mind to stay calm when the stakes are high.

Meanwhile, founders often make their biggest calls at 2 AM with 12 Slack messages open and adrenaline doing the talking.

This edition of Gameplan is about changing that. It's about learning how champions make decisions under pressure and how you can build your own decision-making muscle.

How champions train for Decision Making

One of the biggest myths in both sports and startups is that great decisions come from “gut instinct.” I am sorry to break this to you but they don't.

They come from training your gut to recognise patterns faster than others.

Athletes make hundreds of micro-decisions every minute but what separates the great from the average is how prepared those decisions are.

Take MS Dhoni for example. He doesn’t just “go with his gut” in pressure moments. His Captain cool status and calm comes from years of observing players, studying field angles, and reading game rhythm. When he changes a bowler in the 48th over or moves a fielder two steps to the left, it’s not luck it’s data meeting instinct.

Or think about Serena Williams. When she’s about to serve at match point, she’s not thinking. She’s reacting because she’s already hit that same serve a thousand times in practice, under every possible condition. Her brain has built an automatic decision map.

And if you’ve ever watched a Formula 1 race, it’s pure decision chaos. Drivers make up to 3 decisions per second at 300 km/h. How? They’ve already “driven” that track in their minds hundreds of times before race day. Every corner, braking point, and overtaking move has been visualised.

That’s the secret :

Great decision-makers don’t think faster. They prepare deeper.

The pattern is clear: champions reduce uncertainty through repetition. They simulate chaos until calm becomes muscle memory.

Now here’s where founders can learn the most: athletes practice decision-making before it’s needed. Founders often do it only after it’s too late.

Imagine if you, as a founder, ran decision simulations like an athlete:

• What if this partnership fails?
• What if the top hire quits?
• What if the market shifts in 3 months?

You’d respond, not react.

The Founder’s Playbook — Frameworks for Better Decisions

If athletes train to make split-second decisions in the heat of play, founders need the same readiness, just in slower, higher-stakes arenas.

The difference? In sports, one bad call costs a point.

In startups, it can cost you six months, your best hire, or a round of funding.

So how do you build a decision-making muscle that’s both fast and smart?

Here are a few battle-tested frameworks — inspired by the sports world, but made for founders:

1️⃣ The OODA Loop — Observe, Orient, Decide, Act

Originally developed for fighter pilots (and now used by elite athletes and CEOs), this loop keeps you agile.

Think of it as your internal compass:

• Observe: Collect real-time data, it can be market feedback, user behavior, team morale.
• Orient: Interpret what this means in your context.
• Decide: Choose a direction. Don’t stall.
• Act: Execute quickly, then observe again.

💡 Why it works: It prevents analysis paralysis. You act, learn, adjust instead of waiting for perfect clarity.

That’s exactly what Dhoni or Steph Curry do: read the field, take the shot, recalibrate on the fly.

2️⃣ The Pre-Mortem — The Anti-Hindsight Trick

Before you make a big decision about a product launch, partnership, or expansion —do a “pre-mortem.”

Imagine that your plan already failed. Then ask, why?

• Did we overestimate demand?
• Did we misread the user?
• Did we burn too much runway?

This simple mental exercise pulls your blind spots to the surface before reality does. Discuss it with your co-founders or teammates to get different perspectives on the plan and how it can fail. Athletes use the same approach when they visualise, not just the win but the possible misses, injuries, and errors.

3️⃣ The Playbook Approach — Build Rules for Chaos

Top teams have playbooks for every scenario. What to do if the main striker gets injured, or if the weather turns mid-match.

Startups should have them too.

Create lightweight decision trees for recurring scenarios:

• If revenue dips by 20%, what cuts happen first?
• If the top candidate declines, who’s Plan B?
• If investors ghost, what’s the backup raise strategy?
• If competitor launches a new product, how to respond?

These aren’t constraints, they’re clarity tools.

They help you act fast when your brain is tired and the stakes are high.

4️⃣ Default to Process, Not Panic

You can’t control outcomes, you can only control your decisions. When results don’t go your way, review your process, not your worth. That’s how pros think. After every loss, they ask, Did I stick to my game plan?

Founders can do the same by maintaining a simple “decision journal”: record what you decided, why, and what you learned.Over time, you’ll see patterns and that’s how instinct is born.

🧠The Emotional Side. Staying Clear When Stakes Are High

I want to talk about something most people don’t talk about: good decisions rarely come from smart thinking. They come from calm thinking.

Athletes know this better than anyone. A tennis player who lets frustration linger into the next game loses focus. A cricketer who’s too emotional after a dropped catch misjudges the next ball. And a founder who’s anxious, burnt out, or overconfident? They make impulsive calls , hiring too fast, scaling too soon, or chasing trends instead of building truth.

Emotions cloud data.

And when your brain is in fight-or-flight mode, it’s literally incapable of seeing the big picture. That’s why elite performers train their nervous system as much as their body.

They meditate, visualise, and even simulate chaos in practice so that when the real pressure hits, they can see clearly.

Think of Roger Federer. He’s known for his grace not just in winning, but in losing. That wasn’t always the case. Early in his career, he was fiery and impulsive, breaking rackets. Over time, he trained his emotions like a muscle. That emotional control didn’t make him passive but more precise.

Entrepreneurs need the same clarity. When your investor pulls out, or your top employee quits, the worst time to decide your next move is when you’re emotionally charged.

Here are a few tools borrowed from athletes that can help:

🎯 1.Name the Emotion, Don’t Bury It

Before reacting, pause and literally name what you’re feeling. “I’m angry,” “I’m disappointed,” “I’m scared.”

Neuroscience shows that labeling emotion lowers its intensity. It’s not soft, it’s tactical.

🧘♀️ 2.Build a Between-Decision Ritual

Athletes have recovery rituals between points, games, and matches. A deep breath, towel over the head, a mantra.

Founders should too. Before big calls, just breathe, stretch, journal, or walk. It’s a mental reset that keeps you from carrying old stress into new decisions.

⏸️ 3.Don’t Decide When You’re Drained

We underestimate how physical decision-making is. If you’re sleep-deprived, hungry, or overstimulated, your prefrontal cortex (the brain’s logic center) literally shuts down.

You wouldn’t let an athlete play a final without recovery. Don’t do it to yourself either.

“You make your best decisions when your body and mind are on the same team.”

The Gameplan for Smarter Decisions

If there’s one thing sports teach us about decision-making, it’s this: The best decisions aren’t made in the moment. They’re made before the moment.

By the time the ball is served, the pass is made, or the race begins, the decision is already shaped by preparation, pattern recognition, and presence.

For founders and leaders, that’s the takeaway:

• Build a process that sharpens your instincts.
• Train your emotions, not just your intellect.
• Make rest and reflection part of your performance plan.

When you operate like an athlete, every decision even the small ones compounds toward mastery. Because while luck can win you a match, clarity wins you a career.

So this week, here’s your Gameplan drill:

🧩 Pick one high-stakes decision you’ve been avoiding — fundraising, hiring, product direction.

💭 Run a quick “pre-mortem” on it. What could go wrong and why?

🧘 Then take a pause. Walk, breathe, reset.

Once your body and mind align, make the call. You’ll find that the outcome matters less when the process is right.

That’s how athletes and founders win over the long game.