The Quiet Loop Behind too Many Decisions

Fixing the Feeling, Not the Problem

It was a tense afternoon cricket match, the kind where the air feels heavier after every dot ball. The batting team had lost three quick wickets in a hurry. Not a collapse yet just enough to make the crowd restless and the dugout uneasy.

The captain glanced at the scoreboard, then at the field, then at his coach. The roar from the stands didn’t sound like support anymore; it sounded like judgment. And under that pressure, part crowd, part ego, part fear, he called out: “Time to make changes.”

Within minutes, the batting order was reshuffled. The next batter was asked to play a role he hadn’t rehearsed. A new plan for the second innings was scribbled out like a last-minute rescue.

But the structure that had held steady all season, the defined roles, the practiced tactics, the planned strategies, cracked under the weight of panic. Players hesitated in their new positions. The opposition sensed the uncertainty and pressed harder. The innings didn’t just lose runs; it lost rhythm. And by the time the scoreboard settled, the match felt decided in a way that had nothing to do with talent.

After the first innings, the story on the board wasn’t subtle: “Too many changes, too soon.” It wasn’t a lack of skill that cost them the match. It was the fear of staying still. That one line is not just a cricket lesson. It is a portfolio lesson. Because in investing, many “bad decisions” don’t begin with ignorance. They begin with discomfort.

The Turn: When Discomfort Enters

When wickets fall quickly, the mind doesn’t only register the scoreboard. It registers a threat: “We are losing control.” And somewhere inside, a quieter thought follows: ‘If I don’t act now, I’ll regret it.’ The moment the mind feels threatened, it looks for relief, fast relief, visible relief, relief that feels like responsibility. Because doing something is not always about fixing the situation. Sometimes it is about fixing the feeling.

In cricket, that relief often looks like “making changes.” It looks decisive. It looks active. It looks like leadership.

In investing, the same impulse can show up as sudden shifts changing the asset mix, switching funds, rebalancing too frequently, chasing the latest “best allocation,” reacting to every headline like it’s a wicket.

This is the behavioural pull behind action bias; the tendency to favour action over inaction, even when acting has no evidence of being better than waiting, and even when doing nothing is the more rational choice.

Action bias is not stupidity; it is psychology. “Most people don’t act because they are reckless. They act because they are trying to be responsible in a moment that feels slippery. Under stress, movement feels like control. Like holding the bat tighter when the ball is swinging, even though the grip alone cannot change the pitch.

When Action Becomes Over-Tinkering

Look again at the captain. Three quick wickets fall. Pressure rises. The crowd roars. And suddenly, he starts moving pieces.

The problem isn’t the first change. In real life, adjustment is sometimes necessary. The deeper problem is what repeated, fast changes do to the system.

Roles stop feeling familiar. Confidence becomes shaky because the plan itself is no longer trusted. The team stops playing the match and starts playing the moment. And once you start playing the moment, every next moment feels like it demands another intervention.

That’s over-tinkering; too many small adjustments made too quickly, triggered by short-term fear.

In portfolios, over-tinkering can look responsible on the surface. It can even feel “disciplined” because it involves tracking, monitoring, tweaking, and fine-tuning. But the hidden damage is not only the visible cost of activity. It is the system cost.

Attention gets consumed. Stress rises because every small move becomes a fresh decision to defend. Discipline weakens because the plan becomes negotiable. And once the plan becomes negotiable, patience becomes optional.

Just like the team hesitated in unfamiliar positions, investors hesitate in unfamiliar portfolios. They stop trusting what they hold. And once trust goes, patience goes too.

When Tinkering Turns Into Over-Optimisation

After panic comes the most respectable disguise of panic: the search for a perfect plan. Now imagine what happens after the match ends. The captain and coach sit down not with calm reflection, but urgency. The tone is not learning; it is escape. And the sentence that follows is almost predictable: “We need a better strategy. A more perfect plan.” This is where over-optimisation enters the room.

Over-optimisation is the belief that a “perfect allocation” exists one that can prevent discomfort. That if you just find the right combination of weights, timing, mix, categories, you can avoid the feeling of wickets falling. The real temptation here is not greed. It is emotional insurance: a plan that promises you won’t feel helpless again.

But optimisation has a behavioural trap: it gives uncertainty a neat-looking answer.

Numbers feel like certainty. A model output feels like a guarantee. And once the mind starts believing a perfect answer exists, normal imperfections begin to feel like proof of failure. Any drift feels unacceptable. Any underperformance feels like a mistake. Any volatility feels like evidence that the plan is wrong.

So, the investor returns to tinkering.

And that’s how the loop forms – quietly, repeatedly, and often with the best intentions:

Action Bias → Over-Tinkering → Over-Optimisation → More Over-Tinkering

One bias feeds the next.

The Deeper Parallel: Why “More Strategy” Is Often Panic

The real turning point is not the wicket. It’s the moment the season’s structure stops feeling trustworthy.

That means the plan wasn’t random. It wasn’t a guess. It had been tested through time and repetition through ordinary matches, tough matches, wins, losses, and pressure moments. It worked not because it was perfect, but because it was lived in. But under stress, the mind doesn’t ask, “Is this plan still valid?” It asks, “How do I stop feeling scared?”

So, instead of trusting the season’s process, the captain tries to outsmart the moment.

In investing, “the season’s process” is not a secret formula. It is the set of anchors that exist for exactly these uncomfortable days: long-term asset allocation, risk comfort, time horizon, rebalance rules, liquidity planning, and the reason the portfolio exists at all.

When markets wobble, the “crowd roar” becomes louder than it should be news alerts, social media panic, relatives’ comments, “everyone is shifting to…” stories. And like the captain, we start confusing movement with mastery.

The Psychology Beneath It All

That final line lingers because it is familiar: stillness starts feeling like neglect.

Uncertainty feels like exposure. And when we feel exposed, we start craving closure quickly. That is where the urge to do something shows up: not always to improve the outcome, but to calm the feeling of helplessness.

There’s also the optics problem. A captain who does nothing can look passive. An investor who does nothing can look careless. So, action becomes performative; a way to look responsible, even when restraint is the higher skill in a complex system.

Then comes the volume problem: losses speak louder than gains. When things go wrong quickly, wickets or markets, emotion spikes, the horizon shrinks, and the mind becomes short-term by default. In that state, control feels soothing even when it’s imaginary. Tinkering starts feeling like taking charge, even when it doesn’t improve outcomes.

The mature skill, whether in cricket or investing, is recognising the difference between a real problem that needs action and a normal phase that needs patience.

—————————————

A steadier captain in the same moment might have said something simple: “We stick to roles. One ball at a time.” Not because he lacks urgency. But because he understands momentum and he respects what repetition builds in a team. Structure, in pressure, is not a cage. It is support.

Similarly, a steadier investor doesn’t need a perfect portfolio.  A portfolio that can handle boredom in good times, discomfort in volatile times, and the temptation to fix what isn’t broken. Because the real job isn’t to remove uncertainty. It is to behave well inside uncertainty.

And that is what the cricket match was really teaching: they didn’t lose because the team didn’t have talent. They lost because panic broke the trust in the plan.

Key Takeaways

• Action bias is the urge to act when discomfort rises because action feels like control.
• Over-tinkering is when frequent small changes start replacing a stable process, quietly increasing noise, stress, and second-guessing.
• Over-optimisation is the belief that a perfect strategy can prevent discomfort so normal volatility begins to feel like a flaw that must be fixed.
• In markets, as in cricket, composure is not doing nothing; it is knowing when not to interfere.
• Portfolios usually don’t break because people lack intelligence. They break when, under uncertainty, restraint starts feeling irresponsible.