By Kelsey Flower

Cereal or toast?  Boots or vans? Santa Cruz or Valparaiso?  These are all the choices I have to make every morning before 8:00 am.  I am horrible at making decisions.  When I thought about topics for this opinion piece, millions of ideas bounce around my head.  Family and close friends can certainly attest to the multiple text messages or emails I can send as I go back and forth in my thought process about my more pressing dilemmas.  The more important the decision, the more difficult it is for me to decide.  Frequent late nights are a result of my indecisiveness.  Although, I am very productive once I start an assignment, it takes me a long time to get going while I debate different approaches, strategies, or topics to write about in my head.

While indecisiveness can certainly be an annoying thorn in my side, I have found ways to both embrace and deal with this frustrating trait.  A wise person once told me that a person’s brain can only handle so many decisions in a day.  One way to make life easier is to eliminate the decisions that just don’t matter, saving more energy for the ones that do.  For example, try eating the same thing for breakfast each day.  The energy and time not spent deciding what to eat can then be used later to make more meaningful choices.  While this may sound weird, I can attest that simply helping the first part of the day to flow smoother by not peppering it with decisions puts you in a better mindset to tackle whatever you have next.

Over the years I’ve also realized that one of the simplest yet most challenging ways to tackle a decision is by taking a leap of faith and sticking with my gut.   I first learned this in fourth grade after erasing my initial spelling of a word on a spelling test and rewriting it another way.  When the test came back and my original spelling was correct, I was annoyed with myself.  Although, I am not always confident in my decision making process, second guessing is unproductive and often results in poor choices.  While it’s sometimes hard for me to follow my initial reaction to make a choice without analyzing every other option first, I’ve found that most of the time I end up sticking with my original instinct anyway.   Sticking to this principle is helpful in school and also for other ordinary daily tasks.  My goal is to quickly make the unimportant decisions based on my first impulse and only spend time envisioning all the possible outcomes for larger, important decisions.

While indecisiveness is obviously not a desirable trait, another way to look at it is as a sign of open mindedness and genuine curiosity.  For example, I had an incredibly hard time deciding which classes to take during my junior year last spring.  Everything looked interesting.  I went into my college counselor’s office at least four times with different schedule combinations, and spent hours planning which classes I should take to get the maximum benefit from my Menlo education.  While it was certainly a long process that could have been much easier for everyone involved, I realized that my core desire in course selection was to challenge myself and explore new things.  These traits can’t be all bad, can they?   In fact, whether it is choosing from three things I haven’t tried on a dinner menu or selecting from the buffet of Menlo’s interesting course offerings, they are something I’m pretty proud of.

Ultimately, constant indecisiveness is still something that I’d rather not have.  However, my opinion on this personality trait has definitely changed over time from one of pure annoyance to something that can be both managed and, occasionally, embraced.   I have learned to appreciate and understand my tendency to analyze all possible details, and now usually know when this analysis is worth the time and energy spent on it.  Although I, and most other indecisive people, will never be decisive or even immediately confident our decisions, I have decided one thing: …. well, on second thought, maybe I should consider my options.