Just....make a choice

A Bad Decision is Better Than Indecision

Better Short is an experiment in less than 500-word expressions of ideas or stories within Could Be Worse.

Indecision is a pet peeve of mine.

A family member I know can easily be an Olympic gold medalist in indecision. Give him a simple choice, and you can watch him analyze it to a mushy death. Not only do valuable hours (days?) pass, but I find my anxiety beginning to rear up whenever indecision piles up.

I am good at making decisions. Note that the good hasn’t been used as an adjective before the word decision. I’d rather make a decision and free up my mental bandwidth for more productive uses (like watching dogs react to people barking on Instagram reels) than be mired in the limbo of open decisions to make.

[Have you seen those dogs react to people barking on Instagram? It’s fun to watch in a see-society-collapsing-through-short-reels sort of way.]

I imagine each indecision is a Damocles sword hanging over my neck. I’d rather have it drop than have a dozen swords hanging over my neck as I eat my favourite ice cream. Cats need to make a choice and not just stay in Schrödinger's boxes.

Over deliberation exhausts us! Don’t listen to me but to Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow. Kahneman refers to this as "decision fatigue" — Like a Friday evening for your brain. It just wants to sip some beer and say, “I’m done.”

Make decisions—even bad ones and get them out of your way.

Even though 1:1s with terrible managers have conditioned you to hate feedback, your brain is a feedback machine. A lousy choice still offers data to your brain. Something that didn’t work. Something about yourself. Something that warns you in the future.

No choice is like waiting in traffic. There is no movement, just exhaust fumes.

In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries advocates rapid decision-making as a path to faster learning. Startups test, learn and iterate.

Life is but a startup. — Gandhi, right?

It’s true, though. In life, you are trying to find a person-market fit. You don’t have a lot of resources when starting. You are constantly trying to find how you’re separate and unique. Parents are like bad VCs, funding you but also poking their nose way too much in your affairs. And most people are not very…. successful.

My point is, like a lean startup, where are you getting your feedback if you’re too scared to make a decision?

The best bosses I’ve worked with have been decisive. There’s comfort in knowing that someone running the ship can make choices. Indecision, by contrast, is a hamster wheel. You think you’re moving, but you’re just spinning in place.

This is never more apparent than in the modern dilemma of infinite choice - shopping. In the past (not N, thankfully), I accompanied shoppers who’d spent more time trying to pick a dress than early humans took to discover fire. I’ve wandered in the endless aisles of retail shops, feeling my bones crumble in sheer boredom and wondering what the outside world looked like now. It was hell.

Just pick something!

Decisiveness is a muscle. Work at it enough, and it improves the quality of life. It reduces mental clutter, frees up time, and opens new opportunities. Bad decisions might sting, but they move you forward.

Indecision keeps you stuck in neutral.

Better Short,

Tyag