Spontaneous decisions

On a spectrum of very-spontaneous-borderline-reckless to steady-and-calculated-like-clockwork, where do you fall? I guess for most people the answer is dependent on the circumstances. There are some decisions we make that barely take any time to deliberate, but some other choices seem to put us at a crossroad for infinite time. The decisions we ought to make exist on a range: from trivial matters such as what we eat for dinner to life-altering trajectories like whether we should should move to a whole different continent for good. Whatever the stake of the choice is, I have come to realize a few things about the tricky business of making up one’s mind.

One thing I have realized that applies to a lot of cases is this: the stake of a decision seems to increase the more time I dwell on it, up until a point when it no longer makes sense to take one thing so seriously, then its significance just free-falls to the ground. Evidently, as I spend more time on deliberating something, I come to recognize more and more reasons to support or refute any of the possible choices I’m facing. All these reasons often do not make the dilemma less agonizing. If anything, they make me associate the decision with more consequences and only push my indecisiveness further. Yet, at a certain point, after I have thought long and hard about a dilemma, I may begin to dismiss it (out of frustration or what, I don’t actually know). It’s as if all of a sudden I realize I have paid enough mental tolls to the decision that I no longer wish to have anything to do with it. So it simply exits my mind, and henceforth just gets treated as an irrelevant, insignificant matter that isn’t worthy of any more consideration. I revert back to my initial state without the dilemma, and all the time and energy I’ve spent on deliberating is automatically nullified.

Perhaps the final outcome of this funny phenomenon (which I’m sure has a name) isn’t so bad: I’m at peace again, and I have arrived at the realization that the thing I was so hung up on really wasn’t all that important. (which may often be true). Except, the belief that something isn’t important in this case is more of an involuntary surrender (because of my psychological fatigue) rather than of an informed, conscious conclusion. I would give up only because I was tiring myself out thinking too much, not because I had developed good reasons to. Furthermore, the time I use for mulling over the choices can last for an indefinite span, so it wouldn’t be desirable to be stuck in a prolonged yet uncertain phase of growing indecisiveness.

So, to take back a bit of control over my own attitude/approach towards whichever decision I’m making and to also ensure that the decision isn’t eating up more of my mental capacity that it deserves to, I always aim to restrict the amount of time I spend on deliberating. This way, I can stop myself from using up all my energy on a dilemma that keeps spiraling further and further into the dark pit of unimaginably high-stake scenarios. Is it wise to make this a rule of thumb when some decisions may actually benefit from thinking longer than what my instinct dictates? Perhaps not. But then again, my same instinct (you can tell I’m being very factual) supposes that these decisions are few and far between. And, if I somehow mess up and call the wrong shots, guess what, I’ve come to realize something else to back me up.

When I consider all the factors relevant to a decision, I like to think that my main focus rests with the more “pragmatic” and “concrete” ones. A good ol’ pros-and-cons list is my best friend and I rarely include something like “I just feel like it!!!” as my rationale on either side. Yes I have my instincts, but they are usually secondary to the factors that are anchored in some reasoning or logic. Growing up, I have been largely averse to settling on a choice out of pure sentiment because I would find myself more likely to dislike the outcome of such a choice ultimately, compared to if I put in some “rational” thoughts. As I get older, somehow the pattern gets reversed. It’s not necessarily the case that now I, in principle, prefer my impetuous choices to the somber, inferential ones, nor is it that my feelings and sentiments all of a sudden come with more “favorable” outcomes. What I have realized is that: how I feel is not a dispensable nor bad criterion for a decision to be considered “good”.

For a decision to turn out alright or better than alright, I cannot dismiss feelings as irrelevant to my decision-making, because what’s good in getting to a choice that checks out in all regards, but I just don’t feel good experiencing it? Feelings are not sufficient as a sole factor, but they are not expandable either. Furthermore, feelings (when combined with other factors) can be a pretty reliable consideration to help decide whether a choice is “good”. Feelings are flaky and ephemeral, but that’s precisely why they are also very powerful in helping me concurrently and/or retroactively evaluate a decision. If how I feel about a choice falls in the range of positive emotions, and I’m not blatantly ignoring sensible reasoning, there is a good chance that I am making/have made a good call. Ultimately, even if this choice isn’t the “best”, it rarely has such a distasteful outcome that I cannot go on trusting my momentary feelings anymore. In retrospect, how I feel about things also shifts and matures gradually, and I sometimes end up feeling unexpected sentiments like gratitude, contentment, or comfort towards outcomes that are, under a strict “pragmatic” lens, unfavorable.

Combining these two realizations about decision making, I now have my own approach to this process that deviates significantly from my previous conceptions. In many ways, I appear to make more “spontaneous” decisions these days. I don’t need to spend a long time digging deep into the pros and the cons, to try to include every single hypothesis or argument out there, in order to arrive at a satisfactory decision. Sometimes, when the time constraint for deliberation is up, when I have done enough mental juggling with my consideration of the pros-and-cons, and when my feelings are distinctly inclined towards one option, I can tell right there and then that the one option is what “benefits” me “the most”. These terms are after all very loosely defined, but so are most things in life.

Side note: I started writing this blog post on the day I went to get my first tattoo ever. It was a very spontaneous decision, hence the title of the post. In the end, I wrote more about my principles for decision making, but I’m still happy to report that (1) the time limit I imposed on my deliberation prior to the little tattoo session served me well, and (2) my feeling before, during, and after getting the tattoo remains decidedly good. So all is well.