How I Stopped Overthinking and Started Deciding Faster

And how faster decisions made my life easier

For years I wasted time overthinking every decision.

And usually I selected the “wrong” one either way. I tended to go for fun, instead of long-term success. Who could blame me, I was young. But even in whom I had fun with, I decided wrongly. I cared for women who never cared about me. I discarded friends who were there for me.

But there is a different path.

A one where you’re not anxious 99 percent of the time. A path where you get to live, instead of surviving.

I want to think aloud and share my thought process with you. So, we can see what I’ve learned to make faster and eventually better decisions. All in the spirit of quality through quantity.

Let me show you how it goes.

Feeling stuck came from inability to decide

Now it’s clear to me.

I never knew what I wanted.

I did have needs and wants. But I never inspected them. Never checked if they’re mine. You know I never sat down with pen&paper to figure out what’s there in the world I’d really like to experience. I just took what others wanted.

I had zero priorities.

So, buying a PC happened before I took care for my health. Going out for a drink, before deciding to get back to workouts. Writing to my ex while drunk came before improving my self esteem by becoming a better person.

In short, I fulfilled my whims, cause they were fast and easy.

And I postponed any improvement, because it was slow and hard. I did so many things, some of them probably good. I learned new tech, new libs even added backend skills to my portfolio, but without a goal, without a vision it was just to showoff — “Look, I know more than you”.

The chaotic efforts scattered the gains, so they were invisible.

I had no idea what’s important. I didn’t understand people will leave me at the first sight of inconvenience and relationship that last are rare, because you need to stay when you could leave. Family works like that. But I didn’t know that.

I was convinced I have to chase money and status to be someone, to deserve a spot in this world.

I believed in all this bullshit about legacy and plans. And I lost life from sight. Instead of enjoying what I had, I only yearned for what I didn’t have. And when I got it? Well, there are infinite things to get. And I only have 4000 weeks to try and get them.

It’s clear I needed priorities.

What did I get?

When I decided on my priorities and started experimenting I minimized my anxiety. I’d say I get maybe 10% of my baseline before.

It’s a different world. I can enter a restaurant for the first time, without panicking not knowing how to order, if they server tables, or should I go to the bar etc. Yes, I know.

But the best part is that I know what to do to feel good. Even on a days I feel like shit. I know that if I’ll spend time with my family, write code or an article about goals or responsibility I’ll feel good. I’ll still consider that as a good day.

And the fun part is that most of the decisions I took ended up with good to me.

Even if they were crazy scary at first.

We moved to the country side. To a house, from a flat. Without me ever knowing how this works. And I have best time of my life here. I cut grass, water the plants or put together a folding roof over the terrace. Taking care of the house is tiring as hell, and even more satisfying.

And having a kid. This is how I became a men. Now I’m finally responsible for something more than myself. Even with my fiancee, without a kid, it wasn’t the same. Now I see how great mother she is for our son, so I want nothing else than to help her deliver the care she has inside.

No matter what I tried before having our son, I was unable to approach another human being with such open mind and acceptance. He helps me remember people are what they are, and there is zero need for me getting sad or angry at them.

So you see there is a lot to get. Let’s check if you qualify.

How do you know you can’t decide shit?

If you decide what to wear for 30 minutes, it’s too long.

There is no reason to spend more than a second to decide what to wear. Life awaits you. Decisions like this are infinite every day. If you spend your time and energy on what to wear, whats your haircut, or if it’ll rain or not — congrats it’s 8pm and you did nothing of use.

Another pointer is returning to the decisions already taken.

You know, you decide to paint the room blue, and then you still look for a different color. Decision’s greatest gift is forgetting about the problem. If you go back to it, you haven’t decided. That’s tiring as shit.

Most of the decisions you take are reversible. Take them, learn from them, then take new ones. But avoid returning to the taken ones and changing them before any action was taken. We want real world data on our decisions, not our imagination.

Same happens when you decide to learn new thing, try once and quit.

That’s also a lesson in discipline, compounding and creating a better life. For the fucks sake, you know once is not enough. I remember the first time I opened Eclipse with Android plugin (I used for creating apps). I had zero idea of what I was doing. They asked me to create an app, and what I knew is that I’ll write java code. Once was not enough. I had to return there for 6 months to build a working version of that app.

Life is like that.

The key is deciding and sticking to the decision. It was yours, remember? You took it. Cherish it, live up by it. Give it a chance of helping you get what you wanted at the time you took it.

Indecisiveness is the opposite of progress, opposite of building the life you want. It lures you in by disguise itself as thoroughness, wisdom or planning, but it’s simply avoidance of action.

And action is where fun begins.

Why taking long time to decide is bad?

Like you know, you have 4000 weeks of life.

Doesn’t it make it obvious that it’s not that long? If you spend half of your day deciding on unimportant shit you get 2000 weeks left. And you need to sleep, eat and shit, so it’s more like 1000 weeks . We could probably go down subtracting sick days and bad days. You get the point, you have limited time.

The real world results of most of the decisions are hard to predict.

Before we moved to our new home on a countryside I tried to imagine what I’d miss. No people, no one to talk to etc. And there are fewer people here compared to the city, but I talk with them more than ever. I didn’t know that people would be more communicative here. How could I?

What’s more, the decision to move is reversible.

No one forces us to stay here. First moment we won’t like it here, we’ll move to another place. And don’t get me wrong, it’ll take time and effort, but hey moving here required those too.

I feel like this whole decision making process is like super complex interview, where you have 7 steps with coding assignments and talking to people you’ll never see again vs. just hiring them for a month to see how they work. I interviewed dozens of engineers, and the best data came after hiring.

I never said that trying is cheap, and I think it’s not, but synthetic tests or overthinking neither come free.

The problem I usually have when I decide for too long is lack of knowledge.

I don’t feel ready. Which makes sense, but also doesn’t. The prerequisite of starting is not feeling ready, it’s taking action to start. Sure, get prepared, plan ahead but take action as soon as possible. Decide and live with that.

No need to waste time and energy on endless planning and “thoroughness”.

Why I prefer to got fast?

Once I realized I took my life too seriously I understood fun comes from experience.

When I play life it’s a much different game when I have to survive it. And giving so much attention to deciding, spending days to list pros and cons feels like survival.

My rule of thumb is to decide in 48 hours on big decisions. So I can sleep on them.

And then I just try. If I don’t harm anyone I believe trying new things makes life fun.

When me and my fiancee decided on having a kid I was sure not ready, and I know I’d never feel ready. No way. So, I figured out, well now or never. She always knew she wanted a kid, and I was neutral at best.

Now?

Best thing in the world. That I couldn’t predict. There is no way of conveying the joy of seeing your kid smile at you. And this comes with risks of course, you care for that little creature, you want best for it. Probably why you love them so much.

And this decision is not easily reversible. I don’t want to harm, so the playful aspect is inside the relationship I build with my son. Now I spend hours playing with toys, and no one gives a shit. People think I’m an awesome dad while I simply play with his toys while he destroys my LEGO buildings.

But it’s not easy, I know.

I quit my job, and now I’m jobless. For the first time since I started working 13 years ago. It’s hard, and stressful. Also, it’s reversible if I fail to make money freelancing.

Why not try when you have a chance?

How do I decide faster, better, stronger and cheaper to get what I want?

It’s simple, because I have two ideas that complement each other:

Prioritize
Experiment

1. Prioritize

Sit down and do what you’re afraid of the most.

Ask yourself what do you want, and listen to the answer. For me it was scary. If all the effort I put into building the image of myself would be in vein, because the answer would not align with my past actions.

That happened to be the case, at least partially.

All I achieved wasn’t what I wanted. The thing I got: “successes” at work or having friends were never what I desired deep inside. But getting those have helped me realize I need something else. Not instead, but additionally.

So when I asked I understood I don’t want to do meaningless shit.

For me its:

builiding another app for a company, who never cared about the users, because client paid for it. no one cares if it succeeds or not, or even what’s the point?
I was like that, probably still happens, annoying as shit. I already know what I want and what I know, why waste time telling others when I can listen to them to learn how they see this world?

After that came the question, so what’s meaningful to me?

Solving real problems, real people have. Not CEO’s great ideas about what users would want or another feature to look good on Jira report:

how to organize time, so I can spend it with my family and solve problems
how to create meaning in life?
how to help others treat life less seriously and have more fun (and to let them find out what fun means to them)

And in the daily tasks they can look the same. I love coding, so I write code. I love writing, so I continue to write. What changes is the ultimate motivation behind the tasks and thats how I prioritize thing.

I follow what I want, deep inside.

Now, when I’m climbing a mountain do I need a new iphone to reach the peak? No. But regular runs and walks would help a ton not to die on the way up. And that’s how exercices come before the iphone ;)

And that’s how I prioritize shit to get decide faster and get what I want.

2. Experiment

In the spirit of quality through quantity.

Treating things as experiments make them easier. Instead of putting emphasis on how important having a freelance jobs is for me, feeling scared and stressed I do experiment with what I can do for whom. Yes, I can live without earning money for some time. Of course you should consider if the experiment is viable in your situation.

Like, don’t experiment with getting under water in ropes for 10 minutes.

Experiment in domains with reversible actions, low risk or low stakes. At least start there. Let yourself look stupid, so you can learn. And when you learn you’ll get better, so quality will improve.

Sure, you have to look at the results, and see if they’re according to what you wanted and correct course when needed.

Experimenting is not a magical formula for succeeding immediately. It’s a simple reframe to reduce the burden of failure and increase chance of trying more.

Start as a student, pay for your incompetence. Do what’s seems silly. Become a master and write your own rules.

That’s how I see experimenting.

Decide faster to decide better to get what you want

If you tend to spend days on deciding which AI subscription to buy, this advice will hit home.

Just stop.

Select one. Take it for a one month ride. Then stay or try another one. Do the same with all reversible decisions.

Go fast.

Life is short, and there are too many things to want. Most of the time takers are not worth it. At least for you. You’ll forget about them in a day or two.

Even the bigger ones if reversible, are not worth days of thinking about pros&cons. This comes from the person who compares numbers on vacuum cleaners (but I give myself an hour, then I have to pick one).

And don’t get me wrong, I don’t know how all of this works. If you should or shouldn’t think 3 years if decision affects 10 years of your life. Maybe. I just don’t think treating life that seriously helps me live it.

And I’m a father, I heard that a pretty good one. I’m also a great partner and I have my business too. I do serious things, I just don’t like making them so serious that I start believing my rational thinking is all I am.

By no means I’m perfect with this approach. I still take longer on things of small value to me. But the frame works well. I stopped feeling anxious about everything, and I’m not worrying about every purchase I make.

Yes, I’m privileged. But I still go through all this shit.

Let’s get through this together!