CHAPTER 5

Decisions, decisions

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Sometimes you make the right decision, sometimes you make the decision right.

DR PHIL MCGRAW

Does making decisions leave you anxious and overwhelmed? You’re not alone. We all have to make decisions all day long, from little things, such as what to wear, which email to reply to first and what to eat for dinner to bigger ones such as – you know – where to live, what to do for a job and what to do with our lives (eek!). We’ve never had so many decisions to make. One of the advantages of the modern world is that it’s made so many possibilities available to us, but the downside is it can all feel overwhelming. So much so that we end up shying away from choosing for fear of making the ‘wrong’ choice. Everyone gets overwhelmed sometimes but if you suffer from anxiety you are more prone to beating yourself up about your past decisions, convinced you made bad ones. When we’re anxious, even stuff that’s pretty unimportant in the big scheme of things – which brand of butter or dog food to buy in the supermarket – can seem impossible to resolve. Sometimes we end up in analysis paralysis, taking no action at all because it’s all too scary.

Spoilt by choice

Can you have too much of a good thing? Apparently so. Having too much choice seems like a First World problem (and it is), but it’s no less real for that. We’re drowning in options, and it’s stressing us out.

My client Katherine, forty-two, tells me, ‘I find it hard to concentrate in the supermarket. I get so distracted. I always used to plan meals for the week as I walked around but I just can’t manage it any more. These days, I have to do online shops, with my spreadsheet open.’

Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, carried out a study that showed that when confronted with twenty-four flavours of jam, participants were less likely to buy one than if there were only six flavours. The over-abundance of choice makes it harder to decide, so would-be buyers end up purchasing nothing. Having more options can mean you’re unable to make decisions because it’s just so damn confusing.

Too many choices can also lead to you thinking that the elusive ‘perfect’ option must exist, if only you could figure it out. Whether it’s finding your perfect pair of jeans (I’ve been there; the search continues), planning the best possible holiday or choosing your ideal partner on Tinder, having infinite choices and endless information at your fingertips means you can set your standards incredibly high and put pressure on yourself not to make a ‘bad’ decision.

Schwartz’s research suggests that analysing and agonizing over every possibility is making us miserable and that those who are able to settle for ‘good enough’ are far more likely to find contentment. Searching for perfection is kind of like chasing a unicorn: you’ll never find it and you’ll end up exhausted and dispirited in the process. If you’re prone to perfectionism, ask yourself, ‘Is this decision good enough?’ Good enough is good enough! Make it and move on.

Suffering from decision fatigue

There’s a reason we get so worn out by decision-making: it literally uses up mental energy. The process of choosing drains our willpower, which, according to the American Psychological Association, is a finite resource.1 It also uses up glucose, because your brain runs on sugar, so don’t be surprised if you’re constantly reaching for the chocolate bars or sweets when you’re trying to choose, decide or make plans. Basically, making decisions is hard work and if your anxious mind is causing you to analyse every single tiny choice, you’re going to end up exhausted pretty quickly. (Reportedly, Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg wear the same thing every day – a suit and a grey T-shirt, respectively – to take that one decision-making process out of their lives, freeing up mental energy for bigger, more important decisions.) If you think decision fatigue may be wearing you out, have a look at your life to see whether you could eradicate some areas of decision-making. (I mean, if it works for Obama and Zuckerberg, it must be good.)

Having a solid routine can help you create structure, which removes the need for decision-making and feels comforting. For example, I like having the same morning routine each day. I also like exercising at the same time, having fewer options in my wardrobe and sticking to a shopping list when I buy food.

Decluttering and having a more minimal, streamlined home can also save you mental energy. All those annoying little things – the key for the filing cabinet you can’t find, the cupboard stuffed with empty boxes you need to throw out, the kitchen drawer that’s a mess – all subtly drain you of energy. I recently decluttered a load of my clothes and beauty products. I now have fewer options and each choice is a no-brainer. Simpler equals better in my view.

There are no perfect decisions

My client Carley, twenty-six, from Hertfordshire, blames her perfectionism and overly high expectations on decision-making anxiety. ‘I had this huge anxiety about whether to go travelling. I was trying to decide whether to buy a European train pass, worrying about things like whether it would be worth the money or not. I wanted to have the “perfect” summer but I wound myself into such a state wondering if it was the “right” decision or not. I spiralled into a deeply anxious state because of it.’

Reminder: there are no ‘perfect’ decisions. It’s all about your attitude. Things can feel perfect when you accept them as they are and accept that your best is good enough. Once you’ve made a decision, what you make of the outcome is key. Your anxious mind can trick you into thinking things are black and white and that decisions are either good or bad. But that’s not the way it works. If you really can’t decide between two things, could it be that both are good choices? Pushing to try to make things perfect often makes you miserable. There are numerous good possibilities out there for you and there is no single solution to any problem.

Plus, external factors outside of your control can change outcomes. You choose to go on holiday to France, for example, but it rains for a few days so you can’t do all the things you’d hoped to do. Was there an error in your decision-making? Nope, it’s just a shame that it rained. You made the right decision for you at the time. Nothing in life stays the same; everything is changing constantly. We can’t always control what happens, but we can control how we respond to events. Learning to recognize what’s outside of your control can mean the difference between anxiety and calm.

An obsession with the perfect decision often stems from a fear of making a mistake. But mistakes are an inevitable part of life, so to expect yourself never to make any is just plain unfair! Besides, without them you wouldn’t have any opportunities for learning. I wonder how many so-called ‘mistakes’ have led you to opportunities you never would have had otherwise? You choose to walk to the station instead of getting the bus and end up missing the train but it leads to an incredible conversation with someone you meet on the platform. You get lost, but you discover a new part of town you haven’t been to before. You go out with a guy who turns out to be a dick, but you rediscover how much you love your friends in the process. Never underestimate how much a supposedly bad decision can end up helping you. Every experience has something to teach you, as long as you’re open to it.

Sometimes, when I’m struggling, I pretend I’m the lovable lead in an eighties movie during the ‘training montage’ – you know, those sections where the character is shown struggling, failing and trying over and over again to accomplish something, all to a cheesy soundtrack. The best example is probably that bit in Dirty Dancing where Baby is learning to dance with Johnny. She starts out being rubbish but by the end of the song, and the montage of shots, she has mastered most of the moves and is on her way to being a dancing star (and being in love with Patrick Swayze’s character). Your life is like that training montage. Trying things, learning a lot and finally triumphing, but not before a lot of mistakes and failures, is what we all have to go through. Even when you fail, the audience – your friends, your family, Mother Nature, the universe! – is rooting for you and knows you’ll succeed eventually. Keep going, because you are always learning and making progress. And remember that the people who really matter will love you, no matter what.

You choose your outcome

Michael Neill, life coach and author of The Inside Out Revolution, says any decision is far less important than how you deal with whatever arises from it. You can make your decisions good. You can handle and adapt to whatever results from that choice.

I used to get caught up in little decisions, such as which restaurant to suggest for a night out with a friend. I would spend the whole time worrying about whether they liked it and whether I’d made the ‘right’ choice, so much so that it was hard for me to just relax and enjoy the evening. Now I tell myself that it’s up to me to make the decision good by accepting it and focusing on enjoying it as much as possible.

You can make almost any decision the ‘right’ one by adjusting the attitude you bring to it. Be kind to yourself about the decisions you make. Notice the way you speak to yourself about your choices and apply the friend filter: would you speak to your best friend like that if she were worrying about a decision? Try saying a daily affirmation to yourself, such as, ‘I trust myself to make decisions’ or ‘I am capable and wise.’ One of my favourites is ‘I make the best of every decision.’

Remember, very few decisions are final. Most of the time, life is a series of adjustments. If you weren’t keen on what you chose for dinner, you can make something else tomorrow. If you don’t like the holiday destination, you go somewhere else next time. If you move in with your partner and they turn out not to be The One, you can move out again. Yes, that would be rubbish, but maybe you wouldn’t know until you tried. There is almost always a way to reverse decisions if they really don’t work out.

Get ready to leap

Overthinking decisions is a classic way of trying to control the outcomes. When we’re anxious, we hate uncertainty. We need assurance that things will work out. We overthink things in order to try to control every variable and, sometimes, it makes us feel safer. But how often do events turn out exactly as we planned? Hardly ever – there are simply too many variables and things outside of our control. When it comes to making decisions, no amount of analysis can take all the risk out of it. It might seem easier not to make a decision at all because, that way, at least things will stay the same. It feels safer to stick with what you know. But each time you do that you miss an opportunity for growth.

Life is an experiment, and there’s no rule book. Even super-confident people will admit that, some of the time, they’re making it up as they go along. Remind yourself that you’ve had a wealth of valuable experiences and that you are equipped with everything you need to make good decisions.

Besides, the only way to truly know the outcome of a decision is to take the leap and go for it. Scary, but true. No amount of thinking can replace experience. No amount of worrying can give you the clarity that taking action will. You’re never going to really know what it will be like to live in another city until you try it. You won’t know how your business idea will be received until you start it. Taking the safe option can keep you stuck and hold you back. That worst-case scenario you keep replaying in your mind? It’s hugely unlikely. A possibility and a probability are not the same thing. Try to remember that, if your brain is telling you something is too risky, it could just be the anxiety talking.

When you take action, you learn to trust yourself because you prove to yourself that you can always handle whatever arises. You’ll handle it because you’re a smart, adaptable and creative human being who has resources and strengths that you’re able to call upon when you need them. If you quit your job to become self-employed and it doesn’t work out, for example, then yes, it’s a bit shit, but you can always go and get another job. When you take a leap, you adjust and adapt to make the best of the decision you’ve made. If you’re still not sure, start with a small step and test the water. Often, anxiety recedes once you take action and realize that it’s not as dangerous as you thought.

At a workshop I was running I met a woman called Maddie. She said that no matter what happens she tells herself, ‘This is what’s supposed to happen.’ Whether she believed in fate or believed that life had a plan, I’m not sure. But having this attitude helped her to meet every situation with the acceptance that things were unfolding as they should and she could make the best of every situation. If a decision didn’t turn out as she’d hoped, she just told herself, ‘This is what’s meant to happen’ and adapted to it. It’s about accepting reality rather than arguing with it and wishing things were different. So, if you end up running late because you took a different route to work or having dinner in a crappy restaurant that you chose, hey, it was meant to happen! Don’t beat yourself up. Everything is happening perfectly.

Avoid making decisions when you’re anxious or tired

If you’ve ever suspected that anxiety means it’s harder for your brain to make decisions, you’re right. A study published in the Journal of Neuroscience in 2016 found that anxiety disrupts the prefrontal cortex, making it harder to take rational decisions or weigh up plans for the future.2 The amygdala – the fear centre of the brain – takes the wheel and insists it would be better to play it safe. The study, done on rats, found that when they were anxious they were more likely to become distracted and therefore make poorer decisions. And it makes sense: when we’re anxious, negative thoughts, worries and physical sensations can distract us from focusing in the moment. Being more mindful and present is the antidote to distractions getting in the way of our decision-making.

When you’re anxious, you’re also more likely to think about your dilemmas in black and white terms. It’s all or nothing, either good or bad, safe or dangerous. There’s no middle ground. This isn’t rational and it can lead to your making poor decisions or prevent you from choosing things that could be great opportunities. Overthinking rarely leads to anything good. Creative insights don’t arise from mind-numbing worry and over-analysing everything until it no longer makes sense. More thinking doesn’t always mean better thinking. It often just makes things confusing rather than clearer.

Taking yourself away from the situation and giving yourself permission not to think about it can sometimes create the space you need to think clearly. For maximum clarity and more inspired decisions, breaks are essential; even better if you can take them outdoors (or at least away from your desk). Archimedes had his eureka moment while chilling in the bath. Sir Isaac Newton was having a rest under a tree when the apple fell on his head and he came up with his theory of gravity.

Evidence suggests that the beginning of the day is the best time for making big or important decisions. This is when most people’s mental-energy resources are at their highest. Don’t make decisions when you’re tired or extremely anxious because your brain won’t be at its best and you’re more likely to be irrational. Taking the pressure off yourself and taking time to relax are very important.

Trust your gut

Sometimes your first thought or gut reaction is the best one. Here’s what Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, has to say about making decisions.

We live in a world that assumes that the quality of a decision is directly related to the time and effort that went into making it … We believe that we are always better off gathering as much information as possible and spending as much time as possible in deliberation. We really only trust conscious decision-making. But there are moments when our snap judgements and first impressions can offer a much better means of making sense of the world. The first task of Blink is to convince you of a simple fact: decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately.

Learning to listen to and trust your gut or your intuition, or whatever you want to call it, may be the key to making decisions more easily. But the trouble with trusting your gut is that it’s easy to confuse gut feelings with fear. We all know our guts react to our emotions (nervous tummy, anyone?) so how can we tell whether it’s the anxiety talking or our intuition?

Most of us are out of touch with our intuition; we’re so tuned into the mental noise in our brains that we can’t hear the calm, wise, quiet voice inside us. Intuition tends to be a gentle inkling, while fear screams and shouts. Intuition is unemotional and affirming, while fear is emotional and demeaning.

It’s not fully known how gut feelings are generated, but it has been suggested that, rather than some mystical sixth sense, they represent the wisdom we gain from our experiences, one that goes beyond the conscious mind to the subconscious. It’s certainly true that the gut contains millions of nerve cells and is often referred to as the ‘second brain’, which could explain things.

Wherever these insights come from, something interesting happens with decision-making when we relax about it. When we calm our minds and let go of trying to control the outcome, we’re more able to tap into our inner wisdom, our intuition and our deeper understanding.

Exercise: talking to your gut

Here are some questions to ask yourself that will help you to distinguish gut feelings from fear. Try answering them out loud to yourself or writing down ideas in your notebook. Ideally, do it out in nature or at a time when you’re more relaxed. Tune into your body and ask yourself, Do I feel good about this decision? Which of these options ‘feels’ right to me?

Does the thought of taking this decision give me energy or drain my energy?

Is it possible that the fear I feel about this decision is really excitement? Am I catastrophizing? Is the worst-case scenario really that bad? Is it even likely? What would a friend say about this? Is this something I am often anxious or fearful about?

Now try this technique from Michael Neill. Assign two things you’re trying to decide between to the two sides of a coin. Now, flip the coin. (Try it right now if you have something you’re deliberating over!) Flipped your coin? How do you feel about the result? Whether you’re pleased or disappointed could indicate what the best decision for you might really be. If you’re ambivalent, it could be a sign that it doesn’t really matter and that either will be good for you.

Don’t get scared, get excited

When I first started public speaking I was absolutely bloody terrified! Beyond nervous. It took on a nightmarish quality. Dread would hang over me for weeks before having to speak. I remember having this huge sense of confusion about whether speaking up and ‘putting myself out there’ was the ‘right’ thing. Was my gut warning me that public speaking just wasn’t for me? Every cell in my body was telling me to avoid it. Was it a ‘sign’ that I wasn’t ready? Or was it just fear and anxiety taking over, clouding my judgement?

Fear holds lots of us back. That makes sense, because it feels so real, though it almost always isn’t. My fear of speaking in public was so overwhelming that for a long time I believed it. But something deeper inside me was saying ‘yes’. It was just a whisper at first, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was meant to overcome this fear, not continue to let it beat me.

A couple of years ago I went to a personal development workshop with a woman called Katrina Love Senn. I talked to her about my fear of speaking in public. I remember her telling me, ‘It’s all about how you look at it. What if you stopped seeing it as a nightmare and instead saw it as an adventure?’

That was a turning point for me. I decided I had to view the things I was scared to do as exciting rather than frightening. After all, many of the ‘symptoms’ of fear are the same as those of excitement: butterflies, increased heart rate and the release of adrenaline. ‘Fear is excitement without breath,’ said Robert Heller, author of Achieving Excellence. I didn’t change in an instant and it’s something I still have to work on but I now choose to label any nervous feelings or anxiety as excitement rather than fear.

In 2013 Alison Brooks, a professor at Harvard Business School, coined the term ‘anxious reappraisal’. Her study found that saying ‘I feel excited’ before a performance is more helpful than trying to calm yourself down. This is because anxiety and excitement are so closely linked in terms of how they feel and reframing the physical sensations is easier to do than trying to control them.3

Can you start to relabel fearful, nervous or anxious feelings as excitement? Is the fear you feel about going travelling, leaving your job, starting a business or speaking up really excitement about what possibilities lie ahead? Is that feeling of dread really a call to adventure? Try repeating a mantra such as ‘I feel excited about my decisions.’

Forgo the people-pleasing

I was recently chatting to my friend Maria about planning a holiday. Although she’s ordinarily one of the calmest people I know, there’s one thing that can turn her into a ball of worry, even to the point of having sleepless nights. Maria gets paralysed with indecision, especially when her decision-making involves other people. She wants things to be perfect and feels the need to please everyone so they all have the best time ever. She was convinced that if, God forbid, the holiday didn’t measure up, she would be to blame. Juggling everyone else’s feelings had created a huge amount of stress and anxiety and made it really hard for her to move forward with a plan, for fear of ‘getting it wrong’. She confessed that she couldn’t even figure out what she wanted, among all the mental noise. What should have been a fun experience had turned into an angst-ridden ordeal. It was getting too late to book anything and she was worried it wouldn’t end up happening at all.

As a considerate person, you probably want to avoid upsetting people if you can. Perhaps, though, you take this a bit too far and try to keep everyone happy all of the time, even if, deep down, you know you’re doomed to fail because it simply isn’t possible. If you keep trying, your own happiness and peace of mind will suffer. You could end up burning out. This is another case where learning to accept ‘good enough’ is vital. Doing your best for others but ultimately doing what you want and what you know to be best for you is the only sustainable way to live. Ask yourself, are you taking on board too much responsibility for other people’s happiness? Are you losing sight of what you want and pushing yourself too hard on others’ behalf? If you struggle with feeling selfish when you put yourself first, remember this: when you take care of yourself, it ends up benefiting others because you’re more fulfilled and energized and have more to give.

Fight back against procrastination

Anxiety and procrastination are inextricably linked in a classic chicken-and-egg situation. Procrastination causes anxiety and anxiety causes procrastination. Who hasn’t occasionally found themselves hooked on Game of Thrones or make-up tutorials on YouTube when they should be working, studying or doing life admin? But if procrastination is getting in the way of you achieving your heart’s desires, getting good results in your work or studies or, worse, actually causing more anxiety, then it’s time to address it.

I know the feeling of procrastinating all too well – that sweet relief of deciding to ‘do it tomorrow’. It’s a temporary freedom from having to do something difficult, boring or scary. I very often used to start a day with big plans and goals, only to end it with a sparkling clean house, a jumpin’ Facebook page and an unfinished to-do list. This would be followed by horrible feelings of worthlessness, guilt, frustration and anguish over all the things I should have been doing.

Studies have linked procrastination with low self-belief, low self-esteem4 and fear – ironically, fear of either failure or success. If we’re pressuring ourselves to make perfect decisions and we’re terrified of failure, then it can feel a whole lot easier to put things off or to dump our dreams and goals completely so that we never let ourselves down. We convince ourselves we don’t really want what we want, or that it’s just not worth the effort or risk. We make excuses about ‘not being ready’ or ‘not being good enough’. We tell ourselves we’re not an expert so we can’t possibly give that talk, or we’re not thin enough to start going on dates or fit enough to begin yoga. But everyone has to start somewhere and you’re almost guaranteed to get better at it, whatever it is, once you actually get started. Entrepreneur Richard Branson advises starting something before you’re ready. You just need to begin and then trust that you will get better as you go along.

A couple of years ago I was on the brink of taking some big (think scary) steps in my career, but I kept putting them off. I was letting a constant stream of busyness get in the way of the things I really wanted to do. I was allowing fear to hold me back. ‘What if I’m laughed at? What if I get it wrong? What if everyone hates me?!’ I had a strong fear of failure, but I actually feared success even more. ‘What happens if it goes well but I can’t sustain the success, or it’s too much hard work and I end up worn out and miserable?’

Recognizing our fears is the first step towards overcoming them. I started to see mine for what they were, called them out and made a decision to move forward with my plans anyway. I told myself I could cross the bridge of how to sustain my success when I came to it.

So I began to take small steps. I tackled my priority tasks first thing in the morning, when my mojo is at its highest. Progress didn’t happen overnight but I’m happy to say I’ve moved forward with my plans and I’m able to speak in public, go to networking events and work the room and run my online program – all things I didn’t think I’d be able to do in the past.

Remember, there is no shame in failing. Ask any successful person and they’ll tell you all about the numerous failures they’ve had. It’s all a natural part of the process of learning and growing. Don’t let trying to be perfect get in the way of being good.

Can you identify what fears could be causing you to procrastinate? Below are some actionable things for you to try when procrastination is holding you back.

Eat that frog

Mmmm, frog – everyone’s favourite, right?! It’s tempting to want to start the day with a few easy tasks to ease yourself in gently. You know the drill. Pop off a few casual emails; organize your stationery drawer; check in on how the Kardashians are doing; make four cups of tea. But this is a big mistake. Huge! Productivity guru Brian Tracy says that, actually, we need to ‘eat that frog’. By this he means eating (doing) the ugliest frog (most difficult/annoying task) before you do anything else. Committing to doing the hardest task first takes the decision-making out of it. You super-charge your self-esteem because, yay, you’ve done something hard and it’s only 10 a.m.! This sets a strong precedent for the day. Winning at a difficult task early on increases your momentum, motivation and confidence and inspires you to get on with other tricky stuff, too. So rather than starting your day with a leisurely snoop around social media and some low-level emails that could really wait (or be deleted?!), begin by making that difficult phone call or tackling the nightmare spreadsheet. It will transform your mood and is a bullet-proof procrastination buster.

Tim Ferriss, lifestyle guru and author of The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich, suggests you also commit to doing the simple task of making your bed every morning. This small achievement can lead to bigger achievements throughout the day.

Don’t waste time online

Social media and emails can rob you of a lot of time. As we’ve already seen, they can also cause anxiety – so that’s another reason to limit your exposure. If I don’t keep myself in check, I can cruise social media or emails several times an hour. It’s too easy to get lost down the rabbit hole of celebrity gossip or in stalking the holiday snaps of your colleague from seven years ago. In addition to the obvious time wasted, each time we do this it takes a while to get back on task. Deadline anxiety, anyone?

There’s a reason Instagram is so addictive. For our brains, checking social media is akin to taking a pleasure-enhancing drug. In his book Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, Daniel Goleman explains that checking emails and Facebook sets off a reward mechanism similar to the one triggered by taking cocaine. That’s right – your little ‘hit’ of information, whether it’s Kardashian gossip or a sensational news story, is getting you hooked. You can tackle this by turning off the Wi-Fi on your computer while you work, preventing notifications from being pushed to your phone or using an app like Anti-Social (antisocial.80pct.com) to block distracting websites between certain times.

Take little steps

When the things we’re trying to do just seem too damn big and scary, procrastination is particularly hard to resist. David Allen, author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity, suggests that rather than trying to do too much at once it’s better to break tasks down into teeny-tiny steps and just do one small thing at a time. Setting a time limit for each stage also helps you focus and become more productive, because if a task has no time limits it can feel overwhelming and may never get done. For example, if you want to take up running, break this goal down into all the things you need to do to get you out there. It might be spending half an hour researching running clubs near you or buying some new trainers and then going out for your first twenty-minute jog. Small steps add up to big ones, and you’ll grow your confidence and self-belief in the process.

Schedule everything in

I put things off a lot less when I schedule my day by the hour. A surprising amount of time can be wasted trying to decide what task to do next, or just by taking too many cheeky little breaks. When I schedule every single thing on my to-do list, I know exactly what I’m doing and when. I also schedule breaks. That way I don’t miss out on the rest I need but I don’t end up wasting time making a cup of tea just because I’m bored or can’t decide what to do next. Pinning yourself down to a schedule helps to reduce the number of decisions you have to make, meaning less decision-making fatigue. Phew.

Exercise: rehearsing your day

When you imagine things taking place, your brain is activated in exactly the same way as if those events are really happening, so it’s a great way to prepare your mind for success. Before you begin the day, visualize and mentally rehearse in your mind how you’d like it to go. See yourself getting on with tasks with calm focus and confidence. Visualize things going well and the good feelings associated with that. Then imagine relaxing at the end of the day, feeling proud that you made good progress in your tasks.

Exercise: the Pomodoro technique

This productivity and time-management technique was devised by Francesco Cirillo, who found that by breaking down tasks into manageable segments he was able to be way more productive. You can find out more about the method and ways to implement it at pomodorotechnique.com, but here are the basics:

Summary

★ Anxiety about making decisions often stems from fear of failure, but there’s no such thing as the perfect decision. What matters is how you approach the outcome.

★ Too much choice can be a bad thing, and decision fatigue is very real. Consider streamlining your life so that you have fewer decisions to make.

★ Intuitive decision-making is often just as effective as analytical reasoning, and way less exhausting than over-thinking everything. Trust your gut feelings.

★ Procrastination can be a way to protect ourselves from having to make a decision. It goes hand in hand with anxiety, but it can be tamed!