He who hesitates is lost.
Like all proverbs, this one should come with one of NASCAR’s yellow flags. Had George Custer hesitated at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, he and most of his men might have lived to fight another day.
With that cautionary note, indecision—our inability to make up our mind and take action—can certainly have negative consequences. Here’s just one example: It’s January, and you and your spouse are eyeing a beach property for rent in July. Back and forth you go for a week, batting about details such as whether the house is close enough to the water and whether you really need a four-bedroom home. When you finally decide to take the place, you go online to put down a deposit only to find someone else has already scooped it up.
For some individuals, such indecisiveness can become chronic, a habitual rigmarole of vacillation and inertia that cripples their peace of mind and their ability to function. They debate everything, from what shoes to wear to work to what movie to watch on Netflix that evening.
For the rest of us, these wrestling bouts are more sporadic. We wonder whether we’ve hurt a friend by something we’ve said, but instead of asking her, we brood and fret about it. The asphalt driveway outside our home needs repairs, but we procrastinate, and in a couple of years, the drive needs to be replaced.
Overcoming Hesitancy
In a post on LinkedIn titled “Procrastination, Vacillation, and Hesitation—3 Barriers to Progress (and How to Overcome Them),” Melandra Smith addresses each of these inhibitors to decision-making. She briefly explains their different manifestations: the putting-off of hard tasks in favor of easy ones, the what-if scenarios that are the heart of vacillation, and the hesitance that “is born of uncertainty.”
Ms. Smith then gives some sound advice on how to work our way past these self-made obstacles. Key among her tools for doing so are lists. When faced with a choice or decision, many of us keep mentally picking at possibilities, pacing around the house or sitting on the back deck with that thousand-yard stare of uncertainty plastered on our faces. Ms. Smith urges us instead to take up pencil and paper and make lists. In the case of procrastination, for example, we might write out an inventory of necessary tasks, ranking them from most to least important and then ticking off the items as we complete them. When torn about making a decision—Should I look for a different job? Should I homeschool my troubled teen?—Ms. Smith again recommends taking up pencils or pens to tally up the positives and negatives of the choices before us.
As for hesitancy in general, Ms. Smith offers this advice: “There are two main ways to overcome hesitance. Firstly, imagine the worst case scenario and say ‘So what’. Secondly, think of the consequences of inaction. Remember that hesitation means NOT doing something, which has consequences of its own. Are you prepared to take those consequences on the chin? And finally, train yourself to think, then act.”
If we follow Ms. Smith’s counsel and we’re still stymied? Then maybe even a coin toss might serve as our springboard. The idea is to work past our doubts and jump into action.
The more we practice this skill—and decision-making is a skill that can be acquired—the better off we’ll be.
