How do you go with making decisions?
Are you a pros and cons kind of gal or do you go with your gut instinct?
Do you consult everybody else before deciding?
Or do you avoid making decisions completely?
A lot of the women I work with describe themselves as indecisive. I fully get this – I’m indecisive too. It took me ages to decide with both of my sons whether to send them to school ‘early’ or hold them back. And I still question the decision I made now. I recently booked flights to the UK and it took me two days of covid isolation research to book them. While I think I found the best flights, they are two days that I’ll never get back.
Decision making can be fraught with stress and anxiety and mainly this is because of fear. Fear of making the wrong decision. Fear of looking stupid or letting down our family and friends.
To overcome our fear, we may overprepare or research, like I did with the flights. We may ruminate the sh1t out of a decision or consult with everybody we know, for fear of doing something that is at odds with the views of our social group. But in the end too much consultation can cloud our own judgments and leave us confused. And too much rumination and worry is exhausting.
We might also put off making a decision. We’ll wait and see what happens because things usually work out, but this can leave us to the mercy of circumstances rather than being in control of our own lives. And will ultimately leave us stuck and unhappy.
No wonder decision making is a minefield.
So how can we overcome indecisiveness so we can make good decisions without fear in our life and career?
Be kind to yourself
Well firstly, I think we have to go easy on ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with taking our time to make a decision, particularly about something as important as our career. Just recognise that you can waste a lot of time if you’re not careful and that time can be spent in far happier and healthier ways. If you know that you are someone who takes a long time to decide on anything, then try giving yourself a deadline and some accountability. “I will make a decision about whether to leave my job by Christmas and if I decide to leave, I will tell my friends.”
Accept fear
Fear is not necessarily a bad thing. Fear is telling us that something is worthwhile. If you’re pursuing a career idea and you have no fear about it, then it probably isn’t the right one. If you’re not fearful, then it’s not likely to stretch you or keep you interested. Fear tells us we’re expanding outside of our comfort zone and that’s a good thing. Even when it feels hard.
Fail fast
You’ve probably heard of the Agile approach of failing fast. This comes from the idea that speed of execution is more important than perfect execution. In the tech world everything moves so fast that it’s better to make a product “good enough,” get it out to market quickly and improve it based on market feedback than to spend ages trying to refine it before you launch.
In real life, or in your career, this means develop some ideas, get feedback quickly and then refine rather than spending forever deliberating on one possibility. You can do this in low-risk, low commitment ways. For example, when I first embarked on the career change process I was interested in psychology as a career. Before I invested too much time in that idea I spoke to some psychologists (but not too many) and got insights from them. This helped me identify that whilst some aspects of psychology were interesting to me, I should investigate this related area of coaching. Then things went from there and I began refining my career ideas.
Recognise your decision-making mode and try a different one
If you’re a pros and cons kind of girl then try making spur of the moment decisions on small areas of life, like where to go for dinner on Friday night. It seems trivial but this will help you to start flexing your spur of the moment muscle. When you see that the consequences weren’t dire from your poor restaurant choice (the music was way too loud) you’ll start to feel more confident and not afraid to get things wrong again.
Alternatively, if you make quick decisions with your heart rather than your head, try holding back and doing a pros and cons list, or sleeping on a decision. Again, try this in a low-risk area of your life.
If you’re someone who likes to involve others in your decision making but then gets confused, then trying making a decision completely independently. Notice how that feels and begin to trust yourself and your own intuition.
Try another perspective
This is linked to the above in that you’re trying to look at the decision in a completely different way, but you go one further by imagining you are advising a friend in this situation. Or imagine you are someone else, someone uber confident and decisive. What would Kim Kardashian do if she was faced with this decision?
What’s the worst that can happen?
Sometimes facing the reality of what can go wrong, realising it’s not that bad and preferable to making no decision at all is what’s needed. As you’ve probably discovered by now, nothing is forever. We can change our mind and backtrack at any point but what’s more likely to happen is that you will fail forward. If the decision you make has a negative outcome, then you will learn from it and this will impact what you do next time. Much better to be in that place, then stuck where you are right now.
Just do it
As we tell our kids, the only way to improve is to practice, learn and keep doing. This is the same with decision making. Sometimes you just have to make a decision, be happy with it and move on. Because who knows, it might be the best decision you ever made.
If you’re struggling to make a career decision and need another perspective then book in with me for a Working Mum SOS. Whilst I can’t make that decision for you, I can help you recognise your own decision-making mode, develop strategies with you to fail fast and help you to just do it. Click here for access to my online calendar.