Why decision-making can be fraught and tiresome

The fact that everybody around them, including their college professors, parents romanticise this decade and make it sound like the best phase of their life leaves them feeling that they continually need to make the best of this time

A 23-year-old female client enters the therapy room and says, “I wish there was someone to make decisions for me. I constantly feel overwhelmed by the number of decisions that need to be made. Every decision seems like it’s precious and consequential. I wish there was a manual that could help me with decision making.”

Why decision-making can be fraught and tiresome

She is not the only one struggling with the burdens of decision-making, I find. Across gender but mostly in the age group of 20-30, I find clients discussing how making life decisions evoke feelings of dread and anxiety about possibly making a wrong decision that they might regret later in life. We often forget that while the time between twenties and thirties feels like a time of autonomy, filled with possibilities, it also is a daunting time as so many decisions around career, higher studies, choosing a partner, and moving out of parents’ home happen in this period.

The fact that everybody around them, including their college professors, parents romanticise this decade and make it sound like the best phase of their life leaves them feeling that they continually need to make the best of this time. The reality is that while there is freedom and choice, it may or may not necessarily be the best phase of one’s life when it came to confidence and trust in oneself. In the early twenties it is hard to imagine how one’s career will eventually pan out and friendships too begin to fade away or change as one leaves University. So, it is always a challenging phase in which so many new beginnings need to be made.

Narratives of perfectionism, and an increase in reporting of social anxiety have all made the process of decision-making more complex. Social media which allows us to edit, curate our image is also responsible for this sharp increase in looking for perfectionism which can be problematic.

The pressure to optimize time, make perfect decisions leaves very little scope to explore and, in a way, contributes to decision paralysis and decision fatigue. While the idea is not to move towards impulsive behaviour and rash decisions, the pressure to make perfect decisions can lead to unrealistic beliefs because there is really no way of knowing exactly how our decisions would pan out. All our what ifs and buts ultimately are a way of holding on to control, at a time where both the present and future is uncertain. Young people now report that every decision, including something as basic as how to answer a text message or respond to someone on social media, requires much thinking lest it comes off wrong.

Recognising that our twenties are a challenging time is a good starting point. All decision-making requires us to embrace both uncertainty and hope. Accepting that we will never have all answers, and there always is a certain degree of uncertainty allows us to move towards action and start figuring how to trust ourselves. We need to work towards making micro decisions that align with our values, our interests and build space for self-compassion when things don’t turn out as we imagined.

Most importantly we need to see decision making as a muscle that gets better as we continue to exercise it and remember that it will eventually bring an increase in trust in one’s own capabilities. When it comes to life decisions, we can never be hundred percent sure about the outcome. It’s the illusion of control that holds us back from deciding and remember, not making a choice is also a choice which has consequences.