Decision making is challenging.
Many years ago, whilst working at a movie theater, I was selling a woman tickets for her and her family for a show scheduled a few days later. I pulled up the seating chart, completely void of tickets sold, and asked her where she would like to sit. She froze, asking if she was able to pick when she got to the theater. I informed her that the tickets were assigned to specific seats and even gave her my recommendations. She took a step back, scratching her head.
For the next fifteen minutes, I assisted her with weighing the pros and cons of each seat, offering insight into sound quality and distance from the screen, and even walked her into the auditorium in which the screening would be and allowed her to sit in each potential seat. Eventually, she settled on seats in the back row, but on the day of her show, when they came in, she ended up asking for a seat change.
Throughout the experience, I was in awe of the seemingly self-imposed stress this guest put themselves through for something that is ultimately trivial in nature.
And this is not an uncommon occurrence. In fact, the first argument I got in with my girlfriend was due to a similar circumstance wherein we had planned for me to pick up food on the way to her then-apartment to watch a movie. Before I left, I called her, asking what she wanted me to pick up. She told me she did not care, informing me to pick up whatever I wanted.
I immediately told her I would be picking up Chipotle, to which she replied, “I’m not really in the mood.” I then suggested Whataburger, now getting into my car. Her response was the same. I proceeded to list nearly every restaurant in between our two homes, all to the same response.
Finally, growing impatient, I asked what she wanted, to which her response was the same as before.
“Whatever you want.”
My frustration swelled at this point, as I’d already made twenty-five minutes of the required thirty-minute drive to her home. My response was simple.
“It’s clearly not whatever I want because you have rejected every suggestion I’ve made. So what would you like?”
At this point, she called me an asshole and hung up, sending me home upon my arrival, almost causing the end of our then-short relationship.
It amazed me that the simple task of deciding what to eat for dinner could elicit this much stress from a person, and I became grateful that I was not cursed with the plight of indecision.
However, I soon came to realize that I too am affected by this burden.
You see, I’ve always had great creative ambitions, be it music, writing, filmmaking, etc. And for nearly a decade, I struggled with which of these avenues to pursue when I had time to allot to creativity. Often, before this free time, I would take my dog on a walk, attempting to decide. However, that thirty-minute period never seemed long enough, and I would often spend an additional thirty minutes bouncing between half-finished files, searching for a muse to guide me.
By the time I had made a decision, nearly all of my mental energy would be drained, and I would work for a few minutes before closing my laptop, resulting in a mountain of embryonic projects, barely progressed beyond their initial conception.
As such, the result was ten years’ worth of so-called creativity with nothing to show for it whatsoever.
It wasn’t until the completion of my novella, The Curious Case of the Townspeople of Marble Hollow, when I concluded that the time spent deciding what to work on was itself what was keeping me from my production, not a lack of inspiration.
What I’ve come to realize since is that when making a decision such as this, I should treat it the same way I decide what to eat for dinner. Do not be picky. See, when making any decision, there are an infinite number of possibilities, with infinite variables to consider. Therefore, the urge to weigh each variable, slowly marking off some of this mountain of options, seems particularly pressing and undeniable.
However, this process is time-consuming, and tempus fugit. Eventually, a decision will have to be made, and what you’ll find as you slowly sort the list of variables is that you could never consider enough. Therein, when the time comes to make a decision, you’ll often ultimately end up making a snap judgement, leaving your careful calculations’ only purpose to exhaust you mentally and impose unnecessary stressors.
One could then surmise that one would be happier and more efficient should they make all their decisions based on a simple coin flip.
