47. The paralysis of making tough decisions

We all have tough decisions to make in life. Be it taking a new job, breaking up, or giving up on something.

Often, the process of making those decisions is more agonizing than dealing with the decision itself. We are prone to analysis paralysis. We over-analyze the situations and think of endless storylines of how things will play out. We torture ourselves by wallowing in the pain of imaginary scenarios. When I was breaking up with my ex-girlfriend, I spent days googling “how to break up with someone”, listed pros and cons and wrote a dozen versions of breakup script.

At the end of the day, these are important milestones in our lives. We want to make sure that we are doing the right things and doing it right. But coming from my experience, dealing with tough situations is often a lot simpler than whatever plots I ran in my head. It’s rarely worth spending that much time coming up with the perfect plan because things will never go according to plan.

Sometimes, the best way to go through a difficult situation is to just go through it. Do ourselves a favor and not extend what is already a painful process. Plan necessarily, make the decision and move on.