I have a friend who spent two years debating whether to leave Boston. Should she move to Denver where the lifestyle fits better, or Columbus where it’s more affordable and friends live? Two years of spreadsheets, pros and cons lists, anxiety.
I finally told her: “Just pick one. A year from now you’ll be mad you didn’t move sooner.”
She’s moving in November.
Here’s what I’ve learned about decisiveness:
Indecision is more expensive than the wrong decision. My friend lost two years in a city that made her unhappy. That’s the real cost. Not whether she picked the “optimal” city, not whether one place had better food than the other. The real cost was wasted time and emotional fatigue.
Decisiveness compresses your feedback loop. She’ll know in 3 months if her choice works. If not, she can adjust. Meanwhile, two years of deliberation taught her nothing.
Look, very few decisions are truly irreversible. You can move again. You can hire someone new. You can change course. Decide now, not later.
Indecision is stressful
I once kept a poor-fit employee too long because he was talented in one area, even though he wasn’t doing the job I needed. The team loved him. Firing him felt impossible.
A mentor told me: “Just make the call. The second he’s gone, you’ll never think about him again.”
He was right. The moment I decided, I could breathe again. The stress evaporated. My team was able to adjust, we hired someone new that was a better fit, and it was full steam ahead.
Indecision destroys trust and credibility.
I spent this summer in a hiring process that included four meetings with the manager, another high-level employee, and a panel interview. The result? Positive feedback across the board. Then four months of silence before being told they went another direction.
That manager learned absolutely nothing in those four months that he couldn’t have learned in the four business days in which we talked. He just burned time and credibility. Now? I see a huge red flag.
Decisiveness is a muscle. Every time you make a decision and survive the outcome, good or bad, you build evidence that your judgment is trustworthy. You learn what right feels like versus wrong. You learn that mistakes happen. You learn that almost every decision is reversible, very few are permanent. You trust yourself.
Indecisive people think they’re being careful. Really, they’re just avoiding discomfort. And that avoidance has a massive cost: wasted time, lost opportunities, and chronic stress.
We didn’t land on the moon by being conservative. Taylor Swift didn’t build a billion-dollar tour by playing it safe with her creative and business choices. Michael Jordan didn’t become the greatest basketball player in history by not shooting his shots.
Make the decision. Learn from it. Move forward. Don’t want, decide now.