To Do or Not? Why You Really Struggle With Indecision

“I am convinced that every effort must be made in childhood to teach the young to use their own minds. For one thing is sure: If they don’t make up their minds, someone will do it for them.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt

We are always told we all have choices in life, that our life is largely shaped by these choices and whilst we cannot control our circumstances, we can choose how we react to these circumstances. No pressure to make the right choices then, right?

So what is a choice? At its essence, a choice is just our ability to make a decision when we have more than one option. Some sources claim we make about 35,000 choices per day! From which foods to eat, to what colour to make a presentation slide, to what job to apply for, and deciding what time to leave for that next appointment. So, if we put this in perspective, let us say the average person sleeps around seven hours per day, that means we make around 2,000 choices per hour, which equates to a decision every two seconds! I don’t know about you, but it sounds like a whole lot o’ deciding to me. So, maybe something to pay a bit more attention to?

Given all this, it is no wonder that making decisions can really drain our brain’s mental resources. When we delve into how the brain makes decisions, this mental exhaustion starts to make sense. The prefrontal cortex, which handles our working memory, and the hippocampus, which manages long-term memory, are the primary players in this process. It is like a complex conversation between the brain’s project manager and its archivist. While other brain regions also chip in, the specifics of how they all work together are still a bit of a mystery.

On top of that, our brains are wired to prefer decisions that trigger the reward system. It is like having a built-in “treat yourself” button that makes us lean towards choices promising some kind of payoff, whether that is a burst of happiness, relief from stress, or just a moment of satisfaction. So, the next time you find yourself agonising over whether to watch one more episode on Netflix or go to bed, blame your brain’s reward system for nudging you towards that extra episode.

But herein lies the key to making decisions that actually serve you: you need to make sure that the reward for the thing you want to choose outweighs the other options. For example, if you want to spend more time reading at night but always end up binge-watching Netflix, it means your brain has decided Netflix offers a juicier reward than reading.

To counter this, you have two options. First, you can remind your brain how enjoyable reading is by initially forcing yourself back into a reading routine. Think of it like retraining a puppy… it might take some effort, but eventually, your brain will start to look forward to that reading time. Alternatively, you can focus on the long-term benefits of your desired behaviour. Remind yourself that reading helps you relax and makes you smarter. It is like choosing between a candy bar now or a healthier, fitter you later. By highlighting the long-term trade-offs, you can convince your brain that the bigger, better reward is worth the effort.

So, what tends to hamper our ability to make decisions effectively? It comprises a complex interplay between internal and external factors. Internal factors can be reasons such as insufficient decision-making skills, perfectionism, lack of responsibility, and the brain’s natural pleasure-seeking drives. External factors appear to be more complex and can include aspects such as societal norms, religion, interpersonal relationships, and socio-economic status.

In more recent years, two key external factors have emerged: FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and FOBO (Fear of Better Options). Both FOMO and FOBO are terms coined by Patrick McGinnis at Harvard Business School, and from this work, Michael Jarvis recently introduced the term FOPO, or the Fear of People’s Opinions.

As it relates to FOMO, we fear we are going to miss better opportunities if we make a decision. This fear makes us stall because we want to say yes to all the options in front of us. It is like trying to pick just one dish at an all-you-can-eat buffet and ending up with an empty plate because you cannot decide.

Then there is FOBO, we fear that there are better options available to us and consequently, we fail to make any decision for the fear that we are not going to choose the “best” one. However, this endless cycle where we keep weighing up options lands in “analysis paralysis” — something you would recall from one of my previous newsletters.

All of this back and forth can lead to what is known as decision fatigue or ego depletion, which is generally brought about when we are forced to make too many decisions in a fixed amount of time. All these unmade decisions float around at the back of your head, draining your mental capacity. However, decision fatigue does not only weigh you down mentally, but it can also leave you feeling physically exhausted. In fact, renowned leaders, such as Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, Marc Zuckerberg, and other recognised politicians, acknowledge the detrimental effects of too many decisions on their mental performance. As such, in order to overcome this, they would reduce their daily outfits to one or two to limit the amount of decisions they have to make.

Furthermore, research shows that unmade decisions tend to leave us feeling irritable and lacking control over our lives, which we know from research, increases our anxiety. This anxiety, in turn, disrupts our brain’s ability to pay attention and ignore distractions by paralysing a group of neurons in the prefrontal cortex, which are crucial for decision-making. These specific neurons help weigh consequences, plan ahead, and process thoughts in a logical, rational manner. Essentially, they remove the emotional steam from your decisions and calm the amygdala — the part of the brain often referred to as the “lizard brain,” responsible for the fight-or-flight response and our impulses and urges. Unfortunately, when we are anxious, these neurons cannot do their job effectively, and our decision-making suffers.

So, the next time you want to attribute your lack of mental and physical energy to just poor sleep, work and life stress, an existential crisis, or lack of motivation, maybe consider those unmade decisions floating around in the back of your head. Even better, stop creating a sh** storm of decisions for yourself! Stop adding more options, subtract, stick with a decision, fail, learn, and move on to the next decision.

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