Indecisiveness is an anxiety issue with a pragmatic solution

This post will help you recognize the difference between decisive and indecisive thinking

Making sound decisions requires thinking ahead, but how much thinking is useful? If you experience decision anxiety, you might deploy an all-or-nothing strategy. Either you overthink your options and get stuck in analysis paralysis (the all strategy). Or you avoid thinking about the decision altogether (the nothing strategy). Both approaches place you on a path of inaction, which perpetuates a cycle of indecision.

This post will outline the mindset that underlies decision anxiety and inaction. You will learn that indecisiveness is rooted in unhelpful beliefs about uncertainty, and discover how decisive mindsets work.

The Spectrum of Indecisiveness

Decisive and indecisive mindsets are differentiated by the attitudes and beliefs one brings to a decision problem. For some, the indecisive mindset is activated only in high-stakes, life-altering situations. For others, it is almost daily torture, triggered by relatively minor choices, such as making a purchase, planning a meal, or packing for vacation. Whether you get mired in analytical sludge rarely, often, or somewhere in between, understanding these five features of indecisive thinking can help you break through the dilemmas you tend to face.

1. The indecisive mindset treats uncertainty as problematic.

Uncertainty pervades human life. Every moment we experience is followed by a future we cannot foresee. Every choice we make has unknown consequences. Because we are not fortunetellers, it is impossible to fully know the outcomes of our decisions.

A decisive mindset requires that we embrace uncertainty and are willing to make choices without guarantees. In contrast, an indecisive mindset dictates that uncertainty is problematic and must be minimized or eliminated to move forward. As long as a negative outcome is possible, an indecisive person will search for guarantees and delay making decisions. This is partly due to their outlook.

2. The indecisive mindset makes negative predictions.

When something is uncertain, it invites us to make positive, negative, or balanced predictions. Decisive thinking involves balanced forecasts, whereas indecisive thinking disproportionately weighs the possible negative consequences of one’s decision. The mindset says that if the outcome is unknown, then it is likely to go bad.

3. The indecisive mindset lacks a sense of self-efficacy.

Since unwanted consequences are always possible, it matters what we believe about our ability to handle them. Decisiveness flows from confidence that one can problem-solve the unwanted consequences of their decisions (high self-efficacy). In contrast, indecisiveness lurks when one expects to find potential unwanted consequences overwhelming (low self-efficacy).

When a person lacks confidence in their ability to handle future problems, they prepare themselves by forecasting catastrophes and playing out exit strategies. This leads to analysis paralysis because the problems they are trying to solve are not real—they exist only in their imagination—and therefore cannot be effectively managed by sheer analysis.

4. The indecisive mindset treats decisions as absolutes.

When we are decisive, we see choices as steps in a chain of many. If something bad happens, we rest on the knowledge that solutions can be found to improve the situation incrementally. In contrast, when we are feeling indecisive, we tend to view decisions as absolutes—they are either good or bad, right or wrong. This motivates us to weigh our options with the gravity of making the ultimate right choice that could leave us permanently satisfied.

5. The indecisive mindset is self-critical and perfection-seeking.

When decisions are treated as absolutes, people are more likely to anticipate feeling bad about themselves if a decision does not work out perfectly. Even minor disappointments can trigger a barrage of painful self-criticism. Therefore, when a new decision problem arises, the fear of triggering self-critical regret drives the pursuit of an impossible goal: eliminating any margin of error in the choices that one makes.

The Self-Reinforcing Cycle of Inaction

Collectively or individually the features above fuel distress and anxiety, and cause people to avoid or overthink decision problems. The result is inaction. Over time, inaction strengthens the cycle of indecisiveness because every forestalled decision is a missed opportunity to build confidence in one’s ability to fine-tune their decision-making over time. Ironically, while over-thinkers wrestle in the murk of hypothetical future problems, they overlook the concrete knowable facts that undergird decisive thinking.

What can be done instead?

The single most important strategy for combating indecisiveness is taking action. This does not require gritting your teeth and leaping to a decision. It just requires getting organized, becoming aware of what you cannot predict, evaluating your options based on known factors, and making incremental rather than ultimate decisions. In a follow-up post, I will walk you through five steps for accomplishing this and circumventing common pitfalls along the way.

A version of this post originally appeared on Dr. Riven’s Psychology Today blog, Demystifying OCD, with the title “Understanding the Indecisive Mindset“.