Can't Make Decisions, Am I Just Indecisive?
Another Name for Carefulness
Does even one menu take you forever, and do you keep wondering afterwards whether the other choice would have been better? Deciding slowly may not mean your willpower is weak at all, just that you are weighing more variables than most people.
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Friday evening, “Where should we eat?” pops up in a group chat of four friends. You send “anything's fine with me” and go to whatever place someone else picks. Once you're there, you hover over the menu for ages. You order the pasta, then see the risotto at the next table and wonder if that would have been better. On the way home you remember that you still can't choose between two neighborhoods to move to next month, and that for weeks you've been flipping back and forth between listings on a real estate app.
“Why am I so indecisive?” But people who decide slowly are usually looking at one more thing than everyone else. In this piece we'll unpack why deciding is hard through personality grains and the two seats of you, and lay out a way to match your speed to the size of the decision.
Deciding slowly means you're seeing more variables
People who decide easily narrow things down fast with one or two criteria. For people who find deciding hard, the criteria keep multiplying. It doesn't stop at price and taste. Whether the person you're with will like it, whether it overlaps with what you ate yesterday, whether you'll regret it later: all of it goes on the scale.
Seeing many variables is an ability. In big decisions, it cuts down on mistakes. The trouble is that you pull out the same scale for small decisions like lunch. Bring the same precision to every decision and the deciding alone will wear out your day. Indecisiveness isn't a shortage of carefulness. It's closer to not being able to tell where carefulness is worth spending.
Three grains that find deciding especially hard
High accommodation. People who read other people's moods first will, when looking at the options, calculate everyone else's reaction before their own taste. The worry that the place they pick might turn out badly comes first, so they hand the responsibility off with “anything's fine.” It isn't that they can't decide. They just don't want to carry the weight of the decision alone.
Wide emotional amplitude. People in whom regret rings loudly live through the regret before they've even chosen. They can vividly picture the scene where the option they didn't pick turned out better, so whichever way they go, it feels like a loss. Chewing for a long time afterwards on “would the other one have been better?” shows up often in this grain, too. And that chewing is tilted from the start. The option you chose, you've actually lived, so you can see even its disappointments. The option you didn't choose, you've never lived, so only its good side is left. In that comparison, whichever one you picked, the one you picked tends to lose.
Drawn to the new. Curious people see new possibilities every time they look at their options. The more they research to pick one, the more options appear. The love of possibility ends up making it hard to make the very decision that closes possibilities off.
The you who says “anything's fine” and the you who already chose inside
Look closely at the moments when deciding is hard, and very often your outer self and your inner self are holding different answers.
In the group chat, your outer self looks for the answer everyone is comfortable with. So you type “anything's fine,” while your inner self, in that very moment, may already have been craving a bowl of gukbap (Korean rice soup). The more used you are to fitting in with others on the outside, the quieter your inner voice gets. With a voice that quiet, you lose track of what you want yourself, and that makes deciding harder all over again.
The same structure shows up in big decisions. Faced with a job offer, your outer self weighs everyone's expectations and stability, while your inner self's heart is already with the new work. When the two voices push back at about the same volume, the decision stalls. What you need then isn't more information. It's listening to the two voices separately. Simply writing down which criteria came from your outer self and which came from your inner self starts tipping the scale one way.
If it's a job change, fold a sheet of paper in half. On one side, write the criteria that are easy to explain in front of other people, like salary, the company's name, or whether your parents will feel reassured. On the other side, write the criteria that come up when you're alone, like whether it's work you want to learn, or whether you'd look forward to the commute. Which side is more crowded, and which side your hand moved faster on, tells you where you're standing right now.
Match your speed to the size of the decision
You don't need to spend the same amount of time on every decision. Just asking whether it can be undone and how long it will affect you roughly sorts decisions into three kinds.
| Kind of decision | Examples | How much time, and how |
|---|---|---|
| Reversible, short-lived effect | Lunch, a movie for the weekend | Under a minute, go with your first pull |
| Reversible, long-lasting effect | A gym membership, gear for a new hobby | Within a day, after a small trial first |
| Hard to reverse, long-lasting effect | A job change, a move, a big purchase | Set a deadline, write your criteria down and compare |
People who feel indecisive are often spending third-row time on first-row decisions. Just sorting decisions into the right row makes a whole day's worth of decision fatigue much lighter.
Five ways to decide with less wobbling
- Narrow it to two instead of saying “anything.” Saying “pasta or gukbap, either is great” still hands the other person the choice, but your own taste gets in. It's an especially low-pressure method for the high-accommodation grain. You get to practice bringing your inner voice out little by little, without carrying the whole weight of the decision alone.
- Write your criteria before you look at options. If you're choosing a neighborhood to move to, write three things down before looking at any listings, like “commute under forty minutes, a rent ceiling, a room that gets sunlight.” With criteria in place, the scale doesn't shake when a new option shows up. The more you're drawn to the new, the more this order matters.
- Flip a coin and watch your reaction. When two options are neck and neck, leave it to a coin. Not so you follow the result. If, the moment the coin lands, you feel “oh, I was hoping for the other one,” your inner self already had the answer.
- Put a deadline on the decision. For third-row decisions, set a date, like “by the end of this month.” Worry without a deadline piles up more anxiety than information. When the date comes, choose with the information you've gathered by then, and don't wait any longer.
- Leave one line on why you chose. On the day you decide, jot down the reason, like “with what I know now, this one makes the commute easier.” Later, when the “would the other one have been better” feeling rises, read that note. Once you see that the you of that day weighed things carefully with the information you had then, the chewing gets shorter.
What this doesn't mean
- Deciding slowly doesn't make you someone without decisiveness. In big decisions, that carefulness actually protects you.
- Saying “anything's fine” a lot doesn't mean you have no opinions of your own, either. Your inner voice is just briefly hidden behind your outward consideration.
- Deciding fast isn't better, either. The speed of deciding is a difference in grain, not a ranking.
- If your mind stays stuck for a long time, to the point where you can't make even small choices, it may be a sign that you're very worn out. In that case, talk with a professional.
In short
Not being able to decide isn't weak willpower. It's that you put more variables and two voices on the scale at once than most people do. Match your speed to the size of the decision, write your criteria first, and ask your inner self first, and the same carefulness moves much more lightly. If your thoughts tend to chase their own tails when you face a decision, read I think too much, is that a flaw?, and if you can't choose because you're busy checking everyone's reactions, read I read the room too much alongside this one.
The free personality test shows the you around people and the you alone separately, on five personality traits. Seeing how your accommodation and emotional amplitude differ between the two situations shows you which voice your decisions stall in front of.
This piece is written to help you understand yourself and does not replace psychological diagnosis or treatment.
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