Sweating the Small Decisions

In the ice-cream shop a few weeks back I was faced with a momentous decision. Which of the 24 flavours of ice-cream would I choose? Added to that was the additional problem of which topping to pick. That decision took a ridiculously long time – I treated it as a very important choice. And a friend who was with me suffered the same indecisive fate. 

I asked her how it was that she could decide to start her own business with greater ease than she could choose an ice-cream flavour. And I joked that it took me less time to decide to leave my job and move continents to an unknowable future than it took me to choose macadamia nut with raspberry. For some people, the big decisions are easy. It just feels right and regardless of the risk, they are confident they will make that decision work for them. The small decisions, which have few or no repercussions at all, take time and waste time. There are so many examples: should we choose to have the offsite in the hills or by the lake; should we have the meeting in the morning or the evening; should I travel by train or plane; should I have the pasta or the fish. Maybe if we treated these small decisions as an opportunity to experiment, with the knowledge that next time we can do something differently, perhaps we would enjoy the experience much more – and save a lot of time.