the right choice isn't always right
coming to terms with and accepting uncertainty
I have so many interests that none of them interest me anymore.
I yearn to obsess over all of them equally, living in some sort of eternal flow state and picturing each one becoming my life’s work.
This lasts but a few minutes, before the idea of another shiny interest abruptly hijacks the last, leading to a choice.
What should I spend my time on?
The right choice to this question promises limitless potential, unbounded possibility and most importantly protects my ever so guarded ego.
The stakes are sky high.
At least it seems.
I mean, this is my future and legacy we are talking about.
If I don’t spend time doing the thing that will give me the ‘best’ return in the future, that’s a mistake that is irreversible and unforgivable.
So I bathe in the indecisiveness that ensues, curating all kinds of possibilities and utopias in my head that could be born by taking each respective choice.
I tell myself that as long as I don’t make a choice, it’s better than the wrong one because think about all I’d be missing out on if I didn’t choose the right thing!
So I do nothing.
I wait. I say that I need more time to decide.
I say I need some framework or system to decide which choice is best, which I will enjoy more, which will fulfill me more, but will also pay me well enough.
But then there is the choice of which framework?
And stuck I become.
This is a representation of the inner dialogue that we have when we are in analysis paralysis.
The main issue with this vicious cycle is that our minds convince ourselves that our choices are permanent, whether it be a macro, big life decision, or a seemingly mundane one like choosing between household chores.
The choices we make aren’t permanent, however.
They are experiments.
Assuming that you can’t reverse a choice and therefore needing to make sure you pick the right one is rather offensive to your own intelligence.
It presumes that you cannot react to feedback and have control over your choices in the future.
If scientists conducting drug trials always needed to make the ‘right’ drug on the first attempt, the chances are they would not take the risk of making the drug at all and civilisation would have collapsed a long time ago.
The search for the ‘right choice’ is exactly what prevents us from any choice at all.
In other words, your progression is on the other side of the wrong call.
As humans, we have an innate desire to act and do. The inactive state that analysis paralysis induces goes against our nature, making it impossible to be inherently happy when in this state.
The truth is that a choice can only look right in retrospect.
No-one is able to predict the future.
And even if they were, their perception of what is the ‘correct’ decision isn’t necessarily the one that the next person will share.
So if it is physically impossible to make the ‘correct’ decision given any circumstance, how can one come to a decision at all?
Act despite uncertainty
At the base of analysis paralysis, the mind is trying to eliminate uncertainty.
It is trying to run simulations of all the permutations that could arise down each branch of the simulation tree.
Yet, no matter how many simulations our mental CPU runs, there can never be a 100% degree of certainty to the outcome.
The natural choice, therefore needs to be to make a choice even when unsure.
And to be at peace with it.
At times when I don’t know what to plan for my day amongst the plethora of my interests that face me and potential projects that I want to start, complete or master, I feel like doing none of them.
I feel this way because I have thought of all of them, and none of them stand out as the perfect choice that will not leave me with at least a bit of regret.
This feeling of existential perfectionism is so damaging for our brains as often it leads to episodes of meaning collapse, asking ourselves the question ‘well, what’s the point of doing any of them?’
None of the activities seem perfect enough for me to place them in my plan over the other 40 or so options.
So what’s the point of choosing at all?
Wouldn’t it be easier to just choose none and go back to my comfort zone, an array of things at least I know for sure will bring me some quick hit of dopamine?
How do I get out of this?
I set myself an experiment. I say that I will try one of the options for a given period and depending on results, we will see.
Now this feedback loop behavior is positive, but it can become a burden when one has the tendency to set exit criteria. (if i meet X goal in Y time, I will keep going on the project)
I’ve found that this leads me back into another round of paralysis, this time into something called experiment sabotage.
You say to yourself that you will try this project and devote your focus to it (as multi-focus is what led you to the paralysis in the first place), but those KPIs need to be met if you are going to continue, so your brain half-sabotages the project if there is even a whiff of you not meeting those KPIs.
Why?
Because you don’t want to have made the wrong choice.
Your brain would rather know that it failed at that challenge of its own doing than know that it made the wrong choice.
This is ego.
The superior alternative to setting exit criteria (which is often variables not in your control) that I’ve found is for the criteria to be the input itself.
Don’t know what to pick between coding your application or finally learning to draw?
Pick the one that your gut wants (often the one that at the mention of it energises you most) and commit to just doing it for any time period.
Draw something
once a day and do not add any other stipulations to it.
Just the action and the action alone.
Don’t think about where to post it, don’t think about the equipment to buy - just start.
All of humanity’s greatest creations came on the other side of uncertainty and the unknown.
No great discovery was made knowing before that it was the right path do go down.
You don’t find your purpose by analysis, you create your purpose by doing it.
Action, even when the ‘wrong’ one creates clarity, not the reverse.
— E.J.C.