Decision Paralysis

Life is full of tough decisions. Hard choices are something we make everyday. Whether we realize it or not depends on how much significance we attach to them. If you stand in line waiting to buy your breakfast for the day, you generally wouldn’t attach enough meaning or thought to it to consider it a “life changing event”. Although, who knows? Maybe it could be. If you were that old lady who sued them over scalding hot coffee, or the lady who found a rat body part, or the condom in the Big Mac, then it would be.

So how does the choice of combo 4 or 7 mean so much less relative to say, which job offer you accept? I personally think its a combination of two things – 1) perceived impact of the choice, and 2) frequency of the choice. The perceived impact is a pretty intuitive thing, and would represent the consequence of the choice. Generally if we feel the impact of a decision is significant, far-reaching or long lasting, we deliberate on it more. This makes sense, since being impulsive or uninformed about which phone you decide on with that new contract means you’ll be stuck with it for at least 2 years, lest you incur penalties.

Frequency of choice is similar to how doing something more often or regularly creates a muscle memory or habit, and almost desensitizes you to the impact of whether or not the choice made was “correct”. The choice of what to eat for breakfast is considered by us to be pretty low risk and low impact because we do it everyday. I’m sure at some level, experience plays into this part of decisions as well. I like to imagine that ER doctors are much better at making those life or death choices than an inexperienced intern not because of knowledge, but because of experience. A monster is much less scary if you stand face to face with him everyday.

Then things get  into next level complicated when you think about how your “brain” and “heart” Are misaligned on something. I feel like this is mostly a prevalent issue for me personally, as the logical part of me is often at odds with my emotions. Try as hard as I might to hide it, I am indeed a very sentimental and emotional person. I begin to wonder if trying to push that part of me down is what causes it to surface at the worst times. That being said, I like to think that I’m not alone in this problem, and other people feel like they are at odds with themselves. It gives me slight comfort when faced with a paralyzing decision that doesn’t involve food, cause I’m real good with making food choices.