The short answer
You don't have a strategy problem — you have a direction problem. When there's no clear goal to aim at, each decision floats on its own. The fix isn't better decisions. It's one simple guiding principle that lets you test every choice against something real.
You make a technical call, and it seems fine on its own. Then you make another. But they don't connect. Over time, you look back and the decisions don't add up to anything — no pattern, no progress, no story. Research on decision avoidance shows that when the stakes feel unclear or the options feel equal, we tend to pick what's easiest right now rather than what fits a bigger picture. Without a direction, every option looks about the same. So you just pick and move on.
Marcus puts it plainly: don't let your actions be 'loose and wanton' — scattered, directionless. He's not talking about discipline for its own sake. He's saying that when you act without intention, you wear yourself out going nowhere. The problem isn't that you're lazy or careless. It's that you haven't named what you're actually building toward. Once you have that, each decision has something to answer to.
This week, write one sentence — just one — that says what your technical work is supposed to achieve in the next six months. Not a list of features. Not a roadmap. One plain sentence, like 'Every decision should make the system easier to change.' Then take your last three technical calls and ask: did they serve that? That single test will show you where the drift is happening.