Sometimes the more we think about a decision, the less certain we seem to become.
You need to make a decision.
At first, it seems relatively straightforward.
Then you start thinking.
What if you choose the wrong option? What if something better comes along? What will other people think? How will you feel six months from now?
You look for more information. You make a mental list of advantages and disadvantages. Perhaps you ask three people what they would do.
And somehow you’re now less certain than when you started.
Why can making decisions become so difficult?
Why do some decisions feel harder than others?
Choosing what to have for lunch is unlikely to occupy your thoughts for three days.
Choosing whether to change jobs might.
The more important a decision feels, the more we tend to care about getting it right.
That makes sense.
But it can also create a problem. We begin to treat the decision as though there must be one perfect answer — and that enough thinking will eventually reveal it.
Often, there isn’t.
Two choices can both have advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes we’re not choosing between right and wrong. We’re choosing between two different futures without knowing exactly how either will turn out.
Are we afraid of making the wrong choice?
Sometimes what makes a decision difficult isn’t the choice itself.
It’s the possibility of regret.
Imagine you’re offered a new job.
You can picture taking it and discovering that you hate it.
But you can also picture turning it down and wondering for years whether it would have transformed your career.
Now you’re not simply deciding whether to take a job.
You’re trying to protect your future self from regret.
Unfortunately, we can’t know in advance exactly how we’ll feel about every decision.
At some point, uncertainty is unavoidable.
Does having more choice make decisions easier?
You might expect it to.
If you have twenty options instead of three, surely there’s a better chance of finding exactly what you want.
But more choice also means more comparisons.
Think about something as ordinary as choosing a hotel.
You find one that looks good.
Then you notice another with better reviews.
The third has a nicer location.
The fourth is cheaper.
The fifth has an amazing breakfast.
An hour later, you have twelve tabs open and haven’t booked anything.
More information can be useful.
But there comes a point when additional information stops clarifying the decision and simply gives us more things to think about.
Why do we keep asking other people what they think?
Sometimes we genuinely want another perspective.
Other people may notice something we’ve missed or have experience that we don’t.
But occasionally we’re looking for something else.
Permission.
We already know what we want to do, but we’d like somebody else to tell us that it’s the correct choice.
The problem is that different people may give completely different advice.
One friend tells you to take the risk.
Another tells you to be sensible.
A third starts telling you what happened to their cousin ten years ago.
You’re left with even more information to process.
Advice can help us think.
It can’t always make the decision for us.
Are we trying to predict the future?
A surprising amount of overthinking involves trying to answer questions that can’t yet be answered.
Will this relationship work?
Will I enjoy living there?
Will I regret leaving this job?
Will this business succeed?
We can gather evidence. We can consider likely outcomes. We can identify risks.
But eventually we reach the boundary between what we can reasonably assess and what we simply cannot know.
Recognising that boundary can be useful.
Not every unanswered question requires more thought.
Some questions can only be answered by living through what happens next.
Can small decisions reveal something about us?
They can.
The decisions we struggle with may tell us something about what matters to us.
Perhaps you find career decisions particularly difficult because achievement is important to you.
Perhaps you agonise over social decisions because you dislike disappointing people.
Perhaps you avoid committing because keeping your options open feels safer.
That doesn’t mean every hesitation contains some profound psychological truth.
Sometimes you’re simply tired and can’t decide which takeaway to order.
But recurring patterns can be interesting.
If the same kind of decision repeatedly causes you difficulty, it may be worth asking what you’re actually afraid of losing.
How do we know when we’ve thought enough?
There probably isn’t a precise point.
But one useful question is:
Am I discovering anything new, or am I repeating the same thoughts?
There is a difference between thinking something through and thinking about it again.
If you’re still gathering useful information, the thinking may be helping.
If you’ve been circling the same possibilities for days, another hour may not produce the certainty you’re looking for.
Sometimes the next step isn’t to think harder.
It’s to choose.
Perhaps a good decision doesn’t always produce a good outcome
This is easy to forget.
We often judge a decision by what happened afterwards.
But you can make a sensible decision based on the information available and still have things go badly.
You can also make a fairly reckless decision and get lucky.
Outcome and decision quality aren’t always the same thing.
Perhaps the more useful question isn’t:
“How can I make sure I never choose wrongly?”
It might be:
“Can I make a reasonable choice with what I know now?”
Because most of us will never have all the information we’d like.
We make decisions with incomplete knowledge, uncertain outcomes and no opportunity to preview the alternative future.
And perhaps learning to live with that uncertainty is part of understanding ourselves too.