So you’ve just reconnected with your former mentor who has offered you a role in his new Series-C funded startup. You weren’t really planning a career move, you’re secure in your current role and you have a reasonable runway for progression where you are. Still, the opportunity to build a team from the ground and implement the creative ideas you’ve long stifled is, well, seductive. So you wake up before dawn with your inner monologue debating the pros and cons of a move, and find yourself increasingly dreading making a decision, before spiraling into exhaustion and self-doubt. This is a recent (true) story of a paralysis occasioned by two attractive options. This phenomenon, known as "decision fatigue," occurs when the mental effort required to make choices exhausts us, leaving us feeling mentally drained and incapable of making even simple decisions. In this entry, we briefly review the causes of indecision and ambivalence and suggest 4 steps to overcome it.
Okay, the smoking analogy is pushing things a little, but in a world where information bombards us constantly, and options on how we live our lives are endless, the twin experiences of indecision and its partner in crime, ambivalence, have stealthily emerged as major drains on our mental health and resilience, leaving us stuck, anxious, and overwhelmed. The phenomenon of "analysis paralysis," sees our brains get stuck in an endless loop investing energy in evaluating options. This paralysis applies not just to big life decisions, like the career change dilemma above, but right across our lives, from how we show up in relationships to how we relax and de-stress, to how we respond to that invite we were hoping to dodge.
Breaking Free from Indecision
Overcoming indecision is less about willpower (so self-blame is really unhelpful here…) and more about understanding the underlying psychological mechanisms at play and implementing strategies to balance them. A large driver behind decision fatigue is the opportunity cost of making a decision, namely when we choose one option, we close off the other option leaving ourselves open to self-recrimination and regret for the imagined glories of the road not travelled. It is a subtle and widespread form of self-sabotage to imagine how great the other option would have been Not deciding is your mind’s logical defense against the probable beating it will self-inflict if the decision turns out badly. So any strategy that limits the energy we invest in a particular decision and minimizes self-blame, offers the best return on investment. Effective approaches here include:
· Embrace ambivalence. Holding different (and conflicting) thoughts about a particular situation is not a character flaw, it is a natural part of being human. If we’re honest, we all cycle through different self-states in which our feelings towards (say) our partner or our career vary from positive to negative and back in any particular week. This range of feeling can be viewed as a spectrum, known in therapy as a dialectic, and is best approached by gaining comfort with the co-existence of these contradictory thoughts and feelings. Simply put, adopt a ‘yes and’ philosophy towards your conflicting and confusing thoughts, rather than an either/or approach.
· Accept Imperfection: The pressure to make a near-perfect decision is a huge driver of decision paralysis. Reflect on decisions you’ve made that seemed like duds at the time, only to lead to new left-field opportunities and wins further down the line. No doubt the opposite is also true. The value of a decision is not a fixed, permanent rating, rather it varies by point in time and by what happens next. Applying the 80/20 rule, namely that skillfully prioritizing the top 20% of our priorities will result in 80% of our impact in a day, an effective approach to overcoming the pressure of perfectionism.
· Focus on Values: Clarify your core values and priorities to guide your decision-making process. This aligns with the principles of "values clarification," a therapeutic technique used to help individuals make decisions that are congruent with their personal values and goals. This is why your therapist will keep coming back to what is important to you when supporting you to resolve conflicting feelings, values are both your anchor and your compass.
· Set Boundaries: Give yourself permission to make imperfect decisions by setting a timer for your internal debate. This technique, known as "bounded rationality," acknowledges the limitations of our cognitive capacity and encourages us to make decisions based on our criteria "good enough" rather than obsessing over finding the perfect choice.
Conclusion
The skill of decision making is less about making great decisions, and more about gaining comfort with the imperfect nature of decision making, a process fraught with uncertainty, doubt, learning and occasional bouts of humor. It is easy to forget that some of life's best moments are found not in the flawless execution of our choices, but in the messy, thrilling process of making them. As pioneering Psychoanalyst Carl Jung once said, "the privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are", indecision and all.
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