The more I learn professionally, the less decisive I get in real life. The more I learn, the more I know that it all depends, and that everything is rolling around these tricky tradeoffs.
When all you know is just backend, you'll try to find a job as a backend engineer. When you're a full-stack startup founder with an exit, should you become a backend, frontend, design engineer IC, or start another startup and try to raise money instead?
While you're deciding, you kinda end up in superposition — when you picked all the points and none of them at the same time.
Like a donkey between two stacks of hay, there are probably a handful of situations where wrong decisions are better than no decision at all. With conviction, you get speed and don't lose time thinking about the choice itself, so you just have to accept the risk.
I found myself indecisive, and its hard to truly observe this trait in yourself, because is a shortcut between being critically skeptical [is probably what you want] and being indecisive.
The flow is like: the more you know, the more skeptical you get, and the more skeptical you get, the harder it is to make a decision in domains with unknowns, so skepticism becomes avoidance.
This problem doesn't belong in strict domains where every parameter is predefined, though. Here, you achieve the opposite: the more you learn, the easier it is to decide. The differences between NoSQL and SQL are clear, so the more you learn, the easier it is to apply them.
The problem is that, since being skeptical and deferring decision-making works here, you automatically think it also applies to decisions made in situations of high uncertainty, like most are.
From what place to order dinner, what to watch this evening, whether to buy a dog now or wait until you settle, whether to go for founder mode or join someone else's startup?
As you train to make better decisions in bounded contexts, you try to gather more information in situations with unknowns, even when they are often beyond your control.
The default is to keep waiting for something to happen that you think will give you more context and make the decision process easier, so you stay in these decisionless traps for months.
You delay your delivery decision until you're hungry, tooth pain until it's too late, a job pick until one offer is withdrawn. I bet everybody has felt this unnecessary exhaustion of their willpower while lying from one point to another that keeps you idle while faking conscious proccess.
So is there a way to keep critical thinking while being decisive? Is there a way to be decisive but not premature?
I found those obvious conclusions that I keep overlooking unconsiously:
- First is to truly accept the mere fact that a decision has to be made. It helps to drop the "not-yet decision" branch and makes you ask what you truly need or want.
- Second is to be truly responsible for whatever decision you make. Accepting the full consequences is a part of this responsibility. Do not think you'll revert it, even if you can. Most probably, that is not what will help you make a better one. Like getting a dog that can randomly die soon, as everything else can, you should accept this possibility, and the possibility of all the possible unknowns, as soon as you make this decision.
Accept that being decisive does not mean being certain, but knowing how much uncertainty you are willing to own. It is the belief that you will remain responsible after making your choice.
As soon as I found out those, I felt a powerful wave of self-confidence wired with the fact that I'm actually making the decision, in comparison to silently accepting the conditions. And whatever decision you made, this is You who made it, meaning you'll deal with it no matter what.
This helps.