I was living abroad in Australia when Covid arrived.
I had just decided to start traveling the world as a digital nomad when the lockdowns started, and suddenly I had a very big decision to make:
Do I wait out the pandemic in Australia, with no idea when it would end?
Or give up on my travel dreams to move back to America with family?
The decision felt impossible to make, and so I just didn’t make one. I waited for the circumstances to change until I no longer had a choice. As as a result, I ended up quarantined in a very rough situation far from my family.
That was one of the hardest decisions of my life, but it wasn’t the first time I’d asked myself, “Why am I so indecisive?”
In fact, I’d asked myself that for a long time, when I was making tough decisions (like what career path to follow) and small decisions (like what to cook for dinner).
It took me a long time to realize that this behavior was holding me back in life. My indecisiveness meant I was surrendering my choices.
It took me a long time to figure out why was having so much trouble making decisions, and it’s still something I struggle with from time to time. But after doing the research (and some good therapy), I’ve gotten much better at making decisions big and small.
Let me breakdown what I discovered about indecisiveness for you, and show you some of the ways I got better at making decisions.
The psychology of indecision: Why am I so indecisive?
Here’s something most people don’t realize: when you avoid making a decision, you’re actually making one anyway. You’re simply choosing to let circumstances, other people, or pure chance decide for you.
That’s what happened to me in Australia. I thought I was keeping my options open by waiting to see how the pandemic played out. In reality, I was surrendering control of one of the biggest decisions of my life.
The illusion of “keeping your options open” feels safe. You tell yourself you’re being thoughtful, waiting for more information, not rushing into anything. But meanwhile, opportunities close, situations change, and eventually the choice gets made without you.
So why do we do this? Why are some people chronically indecisive while others seem to make choices easily?
You don’t trust your gut
You have an instinct about what you want to do, but you immediately second-guess it. You override that gut feeling in favor of more analysis, more research, more “rational” thinking.
Related: How to trust yourself and listen to your gut
Unfortunately, all that thinking doesn’t actually get you closer to a decision. It only creates more noise between you and what you already knew.
Your gut isn’t always right, but when you never trust it, you lose access to one of your most valuable decision-making tools.
You’re worried about disappointing others
Sometimes indecision isn’t about not knowing what you want, but instead being afraid of how other people will react.
You don’t want to disappoint your parents by choosing a different career path. You don’t want to let down your friends by moving to a new city. You don’t want to upset your partner by making a change they might not support.
So you stay frozen, trying to find the magical option that makes everyone happy. Spoiler: it doesn’t exist.
Related:
You’re overwhelmed by options
You’re staring at too many paths and you don’t have enough clarity to narrow them down. Maybe you’re looking at different career options, different cities to move to, different relationship choices.
When you don’t have a clear sense of what matters to you, every option looks equally valid and equally terrifying. You end up paralyzed because you genuinely don’t know which direction to go.
Analysis paralysis
This is the flip side of being indecisive because you don’t have enough information. In this scenario, you’re not lacking information—you have too much of it.
You’ve done the research. You’ve made the pro-con lists. You’ve consulted everyone you know. You’ve read every article and watched every YouTube video. And somehow, you still can’t decide.
At a certain point, more information doesn’t help. It becomes a form of procrastination, a way to avoid the discomfort of actually committing to something.
Anxiety and lack of confidence
At the root of most indecision is fear. Fear of making the wrong choice, fear of regret, fear of closing doors you might want to walk through later.
When you don’t trust yourself to handle the consequences of your decisions, every choice feels like a potential catastrophe. You try to imagine the ultimate consequences of the paths in front of you, but your fear of making the wrong choice stops you from going down either road.
These are common thinking traps known as “fortune-telling” and “catastrophizing” and if any of this section has resonated with you, I recommend reading those articles I’ve linked.
Trying to predict the future is of course an impossible task, and it keeps you stuck in a loop of second-guessing and self-doubt.
Why career indecision hits different
I wanted to call this out, because career indecision is extremely real, especially for people in their early twenties.
There’s something about career decisions that makes them feel impossibly high-stakes. It feels like you’re choosing the direction of your entire life, and that a misstep can result in you selling your soul to a company you hate.
The pressure to pick the “right” path is intense. You’re supposed to know what you want to do, commit to it fully, and build your whole identity around it. Meanwhile, you’re watching other people seem to have it all figured out while you’re still paralyzed by options.
So you end up staying in jobs you’ve outgrown, delaying decisions about going back to school, or avoiding career changes because you can’t guarantee they’ll work out.
The myth of the “one right path” makes it worse. You convince yourself that there’s a perfect choice out there, and if you just think about it long enough, research enough, talk to enough people, you’ll figure out what it is.
But that’s not how careers work. There isn’t one right answer. There are dozens of paths that could work for you, and the “right” one is often just the one you commit to and make work.
Career indecision keeps you stuck in situations that aren’t serving you anymore, waiting for some magical moment of clarity that might never come.
If you’re asking yourself “why am I so indecisive about my career,” these articles are worth your time:
The real cost of not choosing
When you’re stuck in indecision, you tell yourself you’re being careful, thoughtful, waiting for the right moment.
Meanwhile, here’s what’s actually happening:
The emotional toll compounds. Chronic indecision is exhausting. You’re carrying the weight of unmade decisions everywhere you go, constantly cycling through the same thoughts without resolution. It drains your energy and keeps you in a low-grade state of anxiety. You stay stuck in situations you’ve outgrown. Maybe it’s a job that doesn’t challenge you anymore, a living situation that makes you miserable, or a relationship that stopped working months ago. Indecision keeps you frozen in place while part of you knows you need to move forward. Circumstances eventually force your hand. Just like what happened to me in Australia, when you don’t choose, something else will. A lease expires. A company downsizes. A relationship ends. And when the decision gets made for you, you lose any control over the outcome.Opportunities pass you by. That job posting closes. That apartment gets rented. That person you were interested in moves on. While you’re weighing your options, life keeps moving forward without you.
The irony is that staying in limbo—the thing that feels safest—is actually its own form of suffering. You’re not avoiding pain by not choosing. You’re just stretching it out over a longer period of time.
How to become more decisive
I’ve used these tactics myself to get better at making decisions, and while I’m not perfect at it, they’ve helped me move from chronic indecision to someone who can actually commit to choices.
Take what works for you and adapt it to your own indecision style. Not every strategy will fit every situation, but having a few tools in your back pocket makes the whole process less overwhelming.
Interrogate the consequences
Most decisions feel more permanent than they actually are. Your brain catastrophizes, imagining the worst possible outcome and treating it like a certainty.
So ask yourself: what will actually happen if I choose “wrong”?
Walk through the real consequences, not the imagined ones. If you take this job and hate it, you can leave. If you move away from home and it doesn’t work out, you can move again. If you try a new career path and it’s not for you, you haven’t ruined your life—you’ve just gathered information.
Very few decisions are truly irreversible. Separating real risk from imagined catastrophe can give you the clarity to move forward.
Get clear on what you actually want
Sometimes indecision happens because you’re trying to figure out what you “should” want instead of what you actually want.
You’re weighing what your parents expect, what looks good on paper, what your friends would think, what society says is the “smart” choice. All that noise drowns out your own voice, which is what you actually need to get over your indecision.
Cut through it. What do you want? Not what would be impressive, not what would make everyone happy, not what would be the safest bet. What actually sounds good to you?
This is harder than it sounds, especially if you’ve spent years prioritizing other people’s expectations. Sometimes I will phrase it as, “If I knew that the decision I made would make everyone happy, what would I choose?” or “If I knew the decision I made was the best possible outcome no matter what, what would I choose?”
We have a lot of content about getting to the bottom of what you truly want right here:
Build your inner council
Sometimes, it really does help to talk to other people when you’re stuck on a decision. But you don’t want to gather information from fifty different people who have different opinions.
Instead, come up with what I call “the inner council”: A group of trusted friends, family members, mentors, or colleagues who can help you think through your options.
Related: How to find a career mentor
I recommend this strategy, but there’s a flip side to it you need to bear in mind. You’ll need to figure out when to stop consulting and start deciding.
If you’ve talked to five people and gotten five different opinions, more input isn’t going to help. At some point, gathering advice becomes another form of procrastination.
Use your inner council to pressure-test your thinking, not to tell you what to do. You aren’t asking them to decide for you; the decision is still yours.
Practice making small decisions quickly
Building your decisive muscle starts with low-stakes choices. What to eat for dinner. Which movie to watch. Which route to take to work.
These choices might feel trivial, but I know plenty of people who opt out of even these little decisions. They say “I’m find with whatever” in an effort to seem like they’re agreeable, but really, that’s just another way of shirking choices. (I know because I used to do that, too.)
Think of these low-stakes decisions as training grounds. When you practice making quick decisions on small things, you build confidence in your ability to choose and move on.
The compounding effect of decisive action is real. Each time you make a choice without deferring or spiraling, you prove to yourself that you can handle the consequences. That confidence carries over to bigger decisions.
Set a decision deadline
Left to your own devices, you’ll keep thinking about a decision indefinitely. There’s always more research to do, more people to consult, more scenarios to consider.
A deadline forces you to commit. Tell yourself: by Friday, I’m choosing. By the end of the month, I’m moving forward. Pick a date and stick to it.
I’m not saying you should set a deadline for when you’ll have 100% clarity on your choice, because that ain’t happening any time soon. Instead, I’m saying you should commit to a date when you will choose based on the information you have.
Most successful decisions aren’t made with perfect information. They’re made with good enough information and the willingness to adjust course if needed.
Being indecisive is like sitting in the passenger seat forever. You opt out of making choices that could affect the course of your life, because the idea of making the wrong choices is too scary. But what’s really scary is being so indecisive that you don’t make any choices at all.
Don’t let that be your fate. Start practicing now with these exercises, and learn how to take control of your life and ditch the indecisiveness.
