Spend some time deciding if decisiveness is a virtue. Dwell on it until you’ve convinced yourself that decisiveness is good, and have come to terms that you are not decisive. Around here it may be tempting to label decisiveness as rash and to rationalize your behavior, or not worth the work of changing, if so return to step one and reaffirm that you think it is good to be decisive. Now step outside your comfort zone and practice being decisive, practice at the restaurant, at work, doing chores. Have reminders to practice, set your desktop or phone background to “Be Decisive” in plain text (or whatever suits your esthetic tastes). Pick a role model who takes decisive action. Now after following these steps, you have practiced making decisions and following through on them, you have decided that to make a choice and not dwelling on it is a virtue, Now you can update your image of yourself as a decisive person. From there it should be self sustaining.
Whoa. Fascinating! Thanks! I really like the idea of this approach. I’m, ironically, not sure I’m decisive enough to decide that decisiveness is a virtue, but this is worth thinking about. Where should I go to read more about the general idea that if I can decide that something is a virtue and practice acting in accord with that virtue that I can change myself?
Thinking about it just for a minute, I realize that I need a heuristic for when it’s smart to be decisive and when it’s smart to be more circumspect. I don’t want to become a rash person. If I can convince myself that the heuristic is reliable enough, then hopefully I can convince myself to put it into practice like you say. I don’t know if this means I’m falling into the rationalization trap that you mentioned or not, though. I don’t think so; it would be a mistake to be decisive for decisiveness sake.
I can spend some time thinking more about role-models in this regard and maybe ask them when they decide to decide versus decide to contemplate, themselves. In particular, I think my role-models would not spend time on a decision if they knew that making either decision, now, was preferable to not making a decision until later.
Heuristic 1a: If making either decision now is preferable to making the decision later, make the decision promptly (flip coins if necessary).
In the particular case that prompted my original post, my current heuristics said it was a situation worth thinking about—the options had significant consequences both good and bad. On the other hand, agonizing over the decision wouldn’t get me anywhere and I knew what the consequences would be in a general sense—I just didn’t want to accept that I was responsible for the problems that I could expect to follow either decision, I wanted something more perfect. That’s another situation my role-models would not fall prey to. Somehow they have the stomach to accept this and get on with things when there’s no alternative....
Goal: I will be a person with the self-respect to stomach responsibility for the bad consequences of good decisions.
Heuristic 1b: When you pretty-much know what the consequences will be of all the options and they’re all unavoidably problematic to around the same degree (multiply the importance of the decision by the error in the degree to define “around”), force yourself to pick one right away so you can put the decision-making behind you.
Am I on the right track? I’m not totally sure about how important it is to be decision-making behind yourself.
Sorry for the late reply, I couldn’t decide how to communicate my point.
You strongly self-identify as not decisive and celebrate cautiousness as a virtue, if you desire to change that must change first. In all your examples you already know what has to be done, just want to avoid committing to action, and now you are contemplating finding methods to decide if you should be decisive on a decision by decision basis. That is a stalling tactic, stop it.
The goal to stomach the consequences is bang on, that might be some foundation work that is required first or something that develops with taking accountability and making decisions.
Spend some time deciding if decisiveness is a virtue. Dwell on it until you’ve convinced yourself that decisiveness is good, and have come to terms that you are not decisive. Around here it may be tempting to label decisiveness as rash and to rationalize your behavior, or not worth the work of changing, if so return to step one and reaffirm that you think it is good to be decisive. Now step outside your comfort zone and practice being decisive, practice at the restaurant, at work, doing chores. Have reminders to practice, set your desktop or phone background to “Be Decisive” in plain text (or whatever suits your esthetic tastes). Pick a role model who takes decisive action. Now after following these steps, you have practiced making decisions and following through on them, you have decided that to make a choice and not dwelling on it is a virtue, Now you can update your image of yourself as a decisive person. From there it should be self sustaining.
Or not, as the case may be! And then there’s the possibility that more data is needed.
Whoa. Fascinating! Thanks! I really like the idea of this approach. I’m, ironically, not sure I’m decisive enough to decide that decisiveness is a virtue, but this is worth thinking about. Where should I go to read more about the general idea that if I can decide that something is a virtue and practice acting in accord with that virtue that I can change myself?
Thinking about it just for a minute, I realize that I need a heuristic for when it’s smart to be decisive and when it’s smart to be more circumspect. I don’t want to become a rash person. If I can convince myself that the heuristic is reliable enough, then hopefully I can convince myself to put it into practice like you say. I don’t know if this means I’m falling into the rationalization trap that you mentioned or not, though. I don’t think so; it would be a mistake to be decisive for decisiveness sake.
I can spend some time thinking more about role-models in this regard and maybe ask them when they decide to decide versus decide to contemplate, themselves. In particular, I think my role-models would not spend time on a decision if they knew that making either decision, now, was preferable to not making a decision until later.
Heuristic 1a: If making either decision now is preferable to making the decision later, make the decision promptly (flip coins if necessary).
In the particular case that prompted my original post, my current heuristics said it was a situation worth thinking about—the options had significant consequences both good and bad. On the other hand, agonizing over the decision wouldn’t get me anywhere and I knew what the consequences would be in a general sense—I just didn’t want to accept that I was responsible for the problems that I could expect to follow either decision, I wanted something more perfect. That’s another situation my role-models would not fall prey to. Somehow they have the stomach to accept this and get on with things when there’s no alternative....
Goal: I will be a person with the self-respect to stomach responsibility for the bad consequences of good decisions.
Heuristic 1b: When you pretty-much know what the consequences will be of all the options and they’re all unavoidably problematic to around the same degree (multiply the importance of the decision by the error in the degree to define “around”), force yourself to pick one right away so you can put the decision-making behind you.
Am I on the right track? I’m not totally sure about how important it is to be decision-making behind yourself.
Sorry for the late reply, I couldn’t decide how to communicate my point.
You strongly self-identify as not decisive and celebrate cautiousness as a virtue, if you desire to change that must change first. In all your examples you already know what has to be done, just want to avoid committing to action, and now you are contemplating finding methods to decide if you should be decisive on a decision by decision basis. That is a stalling tactic, stop it.
The goal to stomach the consequences is bang on, that might be some foundation work that is required first or something that develops with taking accountability and making decisions.