Are you impulsive or indecisive?

Imagine you are standing at the counter at your favorite ice cream parlor. Your eyes light up at the sight of all the many different ice cream flavors and the seemingly endless possible combinations of flavors; you are thinking of the joy when you will soon experience when you take the first lick off the cone. But wait, you still have to decide what flavor, what size, sprinkles or no sprinkles, regular or waffle cone, or maybe even a cup instead (you are wearing your favorite top, and you would hate to get ice cream all over it when it drips. And it WILL drip). Decisions … decisions … decisions. For some of you reading this, the choice may be easy. You may have your favorite ice cream flavor, and you will simply order that one. But if you are an indecisive person - like me - then you can probably relate to my dilemma: I just can’t decide right away what flavor I want . . . EVER..

Raspberry. Butter Pecan. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. Pumpkin. Coffee. Mint Chocolate. Moose Tracks. Pistachio. Vanilla. They ALL sound sooooo good.

Really, you probably would be happy with any flavor. But instead, you hem and haw, go back and forth, pick one and then change your mind until you narrow it down to a few most likely choices. And then, you make a decision. “Alright, it’s fall, so Pumpkin.” But then, after FINALLY making up your mind, you worry that you made the wrong decision. What if you would get more pleasure out of a different flavor? “Maybe I should get Butter Pecan instead,” you tell the server, as she moves from the container of Pumpkin to Butter Pecan. And this continues until you finally settle on Pumpkin. It is FALL, after all, and there is nothing quite like pumpkin ANYTHING on the first day of fall.

The struggle of an indecisive person is real. Throughout a decision process - any decision process, from choosing an ice cream flavor, a car, a new home, or even a boyfriend or girlfriend - we start to undermine and second-guess ourselves. We tend to be harsh on ourselves if we make the wrong decision, so being indecisive is a subconscious way of passively addressing the choices at hand. Indecisiveness is, therefore, a conflict between what appears to be only two choices: holding off on making a decision so long so as to be passive and avoid making a wrong decision, and actually making a decision. But if we make a decision, we risk worrying or being critical towards ourselves if we make a wrong decision. This struggle is a no-win situation for us. Sometimes to avoid doing either, we will have someone else decide for us, but there is no personal growth in that.

Maybe a root cause of this indecisiveness is actually ambivalence towards a certain subject. Maybe we don’t really care. How can we make a decision if we don’t fully understand or know how we feel about something?

Most people who are rational and logical normally are able to make decisions without too much effort or delay, but they sometimes will experience indecision if they lack adequate information at the moment they have to decide. This is not the case for the rest of us who experience indecisiveness on a regular basis. In our development, we have developed a learned response, a self-defense mechanism designed to protect us in any and all circumstances of fear in making a wrong decision and facing its consequences. Most of all, I think we fear the uncertainty that looms in decision making, not the decision itself.

My boyfriend, a University of Rochester Financial Economics graduate, has explained my indecisiveness to me in economics terms in order for me to better understand natural thought process and to help me in managing my indecisiveness. Basically, the uncertainty I fear in making decisions is associated with my risk aversion. Defined in economic terms, risk aversion is the behavior of humans, when exposed to uncertainty, in an attempt to reduce that uncertainty. As he says, “Humans are risk averse, but we all have different risk tolerances. In every decision we make, we incorporate a risk element and the benefit, or utility, we receive to calculate before deciding. From making a decision, we get some level of expected (average) utility, and the risk associated reduces the expected utility we get.”

My economics classes in high school and at U of R, and my boyfriend’s explanation have taught me two things. 1) Humans judge the downside and upside to opportunities very differently; and 2) I tend to be highly risk averse, and therefore, very indecisive, partly because I usually assess the downside risk more harshly than I see the potential upside or even likely benefits of decisions I make.

My dad likes to tell me how indecision can make you less effective in business. “I once told a coworker that she was so afraid of making a wrong decision that if she would make only two or three decisions each day and she got only one wrong, her success rate was only two out of three, or 66 percent, and I might make 10 decisions in a day and get two wrong, but my success rate would be 80 percent, and I would move the office forward a lot farther than she would by making only a few decisions and making only one mistake.” He has told me this story several times - pretty much whenever I am having difficulty making a decision about something important - , and it makes sense to me in the abstract, but I still have a difficult time making decisions anyway. I guess I am just that risk-averse.

I recommended reading this Forbes article, “Seven Ways to Conquer Indecision,” in which the author provides several excellent ways to combat indecision, or this Elite Daily article, “Should I or Shouldn’t i?,” for nine ways to conquer indecisiveness. The second article explains pretty much exactly how I feel on almost a daily basis, and I agree with each of the tips the author provides.

Indecisiveness is a constant battle, but I have learned that the most successful people make decisions, and make decisions fast. Every day, I make a conscious effort to work on my ability to do that. Our decisions are what shape us. Our thoughts lead to decisions, and our decisions lead to actions. Each teaches us about ourselves and the world. Some decisions are easy, and some are hard, but I am learning that they all need to be made to continue to grow. We try to avoid risk, but without risk, there is no reward.

As Katie Berbert suggests in her ninth tip to conquer indecisiveness, “When all else fails, flip a coin.”

Now, go make a decision. You’ll be glad you did.