Overcoming indecision

Life is mostly about decisions, every day we’re faced with a lot of decisions such as what to wear or which means of transport use when commuting, The fact that we’re going to face a lot of decisions is inevitable. If you’re an indecisive person, you might have thought of delaying infinitely your decision or worst make other people decide for you. That’s counter-productive in its roots because decisions are essentially a mechanism that allows us to choose what we think is best for us. For our own good, we must learn how to make decisions that benefit us.

Now, making decisions it’s quite hard, often there are a lot of factors that we be must take into account before making a decision. When the number of competing factors is too much we may end in a state of “analysis paralysis” which is essentially freezing and not knowing what to decide. Some other factors that cause “analysis paralysis” are being scared of messing up or feeling uncomfortable with the uncertainty of your decision.

My goal with this article is to explain some tricks that may help you overcome “analysis paralysis”. First, we need to understand what “decision-making” is.

In plain words, decision-making is the process of narrowing a list of options to just one.

Knowing that you might imagine, the greater the number of options, the harder it would be to decide. Most decision-making techniques addresses ways to discard options quickly so that you’re left with a list of 2-3 options.

If you’re in the point when you’re unable to make decisions, or you overthink them, you have to get your mind used to making decisions. In order to do so, you must start by making trivial decisions without thinking at all (use your intuition). Some example of that might be: choosing a Netflix show that appeals to you without reading reviews, picking a random restaurant to have lunch, take a walk without choosing a specific route, etc. All these decisions have in common that the cost of failing in them is insignificant, at most, you might lose some money or time, but that’s completely natural, you don’t have to make perfect decisions all the time. Remind yourself, you’re human and humans sometimes fail.

Another thing that I personally like to do is analyze the importance of decisions. For example, deciding what to wear to buy groceries doesn’t have that much importance compared to picking the company I want to work for. By doing this comparison, I get weight off my shoulders and take the decision more relaxed. It also reminds me that I’ve made harder decisions in the past, and it’s not that much of a big deal. In addition to this tip, taking a break also helps a lot with looking things from a different perspective.

As a last tip, I’ll say that a good way around overthinking a decision is to set a deadline. Let’s suppose you have to decide where you’re going for your next vacation, you might give yourself a week to decide where are you going and maybe an extra week to plan things ahead. By doing so, you’re limiting your “overthinking” time and creating a sense of urgency and creating pressure, which makes you think quicker.

In conclusion:

• Decisions are inevitable, and you should face them on your own. You could take external help, but at the end the responsibility is yours.
• Thinking too much a decision might make you froze and not able to decide.
• For getting used to deciding quicker, you must make trivial decisions without thinking. Sometimes you’ll fail, but it’ll help you build confidence around your decisions.
• Analyze the impact that this decision is going to have in your life, most times we give decisions more importance than what they deserve,
• When you’d found yourself overthinking a decision, set a deadline for you to decide.

Thanks for reading, I’ll be writing another article about making better decisions in the next week.