Five causes of indecision – and how to overcome them

09/01/19 • 8 min

I took an early walk, and thought about my day. Being a fairly decisive person I wondered why I was having so much trouble deciding if I was going to hang out by the lake and write something?

It seemed like a simple decision – either I am going to do it or not? Is there something more pressing – something more important that I needed to do instead?

That’s it, right? Yet I went back and forth on it as I walked. Neither decision felt “right.” One of them has to be right, or at least one of them has to “more right.” Right?

The problem wasn’t that one of the options didn’t feel more correct, it was something else. Perhaps the root of indecision for that moment, and maybe for moments in your life, was the something else...

If you’re experiencing indecision on something its probably caused by one of five things:

Not enough information.
Two (or more) items are in conflict.
Two or more items are of equal value to you. Time, energy and resources assessment fixes that
Not being honest with yourself – you feel obligated to do one, but really want to do the other
Good/better best

PS – This podcast was also produced as a youtube video. Check it out on the Alchemy for Life youtube channel.

The post Five causes of indecision – and how to overcome them first appeared on Alchemy For Life.

I took an early walk, and thought about my day. Being a fairly decisive person I wondered why I was having so much trouble deciding if I was going to hang out by the lake and write something?

It seemed like a simple decision – either I am going to do it or not? Is there something more pressing – something more important that I needed to do instead?

That’s it, right? Yet I went back and forth on it as I walked. Neither decision felt “right.” One of them has to be right, or at least one of them has to “more right.” Right?

If you’re experiencing indecision on something its probably caused by one of five things:

Not enough information.
Two (or more) items are in conflict.
Two or more items are of equal value to you. Time, energy and resources assessment fixes that
Not being honest with yourself – you feel obligated to do one, but really want to do the other
Good/better best

PS – This podcast was also produced as a youtube video. Check it out on the Alchemy for Life youtube channel.

The post Five causes of indecision – and how to overcome them first appeared on Alchemy For Life.

Previous Episode

Resolutions revisited

Hi. How are those New Year’s Resolutions doing?

(pause for gasps, pregnant silence and bad looks)

You made some right? Because you didn’t really listen to me when I said resolutions were a bad idea – that’s understandable because I’m just a disembodied voice and that’s not enough status to prevent you from making yourself feel better.

So since you made them, how are they doing?

“It’s August!” you yell. To which I reply that you’re going to make your 2020 resolutions in five months...

OK, deep breath. If you made resolutions in 2018 for 2019, and didn’t keep them, then one of four things has happened:

You’ve either abandoned them because that’s a painful, annoying dead end
You had a modicum of success but just slowed then stopped
You decided it was just a happy drunken promise without regard for the reality of what it would take to accomplish it
You decide that you just aren’t capable, and, oh well, that’s life.

Ok then. That’s everyone! Have a good night. (cue bumper music)

You’re still here? And not happy with me? So now what?

Let’s do one of two things:

Get them done
Decide that they were a bad idea

That’s it. Keep in mind that you have me at a disadvantage – I can’t use all my powerful tools I built from scratch, examine what’s really going on in your life, and work with you one-on-one. So It’s just a read/listen kind of thing but I’ll do my best. So let’s revisit with solutions:

You’ve either abandoned them because that’s a painful, annoying dead end

You may have dodged a bullet. This may have been a goal you just arbitrarily set because, hey, why not? Like saying “I’m going to visit the moons of Titan” or “Sure I’ll help you move next year.” If so then just leave it. If this was something you really wanted to do then you hit a wall, and that wall is probably made of Time, Energy and/or Resources.

You had a modicum of success but just slowed then stopped

Similar to above, it may simply be that you didn’t make the time for it (going to the gym, working on that hobby, etc) and the rest of your schedule said F.U. and it got pushed out. Making the proper time for it can fix that.

You decided it was just a happy drunken promise without regard for the reality of what it would take to accomplish it

All humor is based on some sort of truth or it’s not funny. The same goes for drunken promises – there was a reason you said that, when your inhibitions were diminished. Is this a secret desire? Don’t you beat yourself up over it.

You decide that you just aren’t capable, and, oh well, that’s life.

Well, you may not be – see “visiting moons of Titan” above. Or perhaps you are capable and you are being fooled by that thing called reality. Meaning, you need to adjust reality to fit this desire. That reality comes in the form of your time, energy and resources.

Do you see a theme with all of this? You should. It’s those three magic words and they are not “I love you” though I like you an awful lot. Honest.

Time, Energy and Resources – how you adjust them, how you use them, how you let them rule over you.

The post Resolutions revisited first appeared on Alchemy For Life.

Next Episode

Does this suck?

If you’re a creative or anyone that produces a project or a work product of some kind that you can take a step back and look at, at some point you may have asked “Does this suck?”

Let’s get this out of the way – I’m not talking about not having the confidence in what you do, nor am I talking about being a bit neurotic about things or second-guessing yourself or constantly needing to have someone else validate your stuff. I’m talking about the other kind of person – the person I assume you are: somebody who gets it. You’re the kind that thinks if you don’t give it your all when you do something... what’s the point?

So let’s assume you’re like me and you’re a person that gives it their all. It’s this giving your all to it that actually creates this moment sometimes.

Sometimes when you’re deep in the middle of giving your hypothetical 100% you stop and think, does this suck? Because you value your effort and you don’t want to put a tremendous amount of effort into something only to have a product that you’re not proud of, people don’t like, and you could’ve done better.

So the first step of this is recognizing that you do have these moments from time to time. You may have this moment every single time you work on a project. And I’m not talking about making course corrections as you work. I’m talking about the oh crap does this suck moment.

If you’re having this moment a lot it means you think your work is important, you possibly doubt your abilities and you’re not using your time machine. What I mean by the last thing is you can simply look back at the other stuff you’ve done. Does all that suck? No? Then why would this?

You have a few answers, you clever person you:

Each one is different
Some are more challenging than others
Sometimes I’m so deep into it that I don’t see the big picture.

It’s that last one that is the most valuable. It is universally valuable to be able to pull yourself out of a project, a conversation, a movement, a relationship and anything that you were deeply involved in to take a look from above and assess it as a whole. The “30,000 foot view” as they say.

I know this is valuable because I was once pursued to develop a product by the president of a development company. After meeting with him and hearing about his vision, I asked him why he didn’t just have his team of developers create the product for him?

His response was that though their development skills were on the whole equal to mine, none of them had the ability to look at the project from the 30,000 foot view. I had the ability to dig deep and also take a step back.

I think if you’re an independent creative, an entrepreneur or someone who is self-driven you have probably developed both skills in parallel:

( Dig Deep + 30,000 foot view )

And those two skills create the perfect environment to once in a while think, “Does it suck?”

So my advice to you is just these three things:

If it sucks it doesn’t mean you suck. Non-sucky people sometimes make sucky things.
Understand that there’s some room between constantly doubting your work and assuming that everything is fantastic. You want to live in the middle there somewhere.
Keep asking yourself if it sucks because that means you were making a good product and ultimately you are the judge of things. And you care.

Keep caring and take care.

PS – This podcast is also a youtube video. Check out the Alchemy for Life channel. Tell me what you think, feel free to connect on LinkedIn, and thanks for subscribing!

The post Does this suck? first appeared on Alchemy For Life.