I deal a lot with decision paralysis and this has been a helpful mental tool. Decisions I might get stuck on:

• Which product do I buy of these options
• Which apartment do I move into
• Which travel itinerary do I book

Decisions are effectively constraints on your life path. At one point, you have N options open to you, but after the (permanent) decision, you now have only one, the one you chose.

The paralysis comes from worrying about making the wrong decision and suffering because of it. But at a certain point, the decision process saturates. You run out of time and energy, and spending more of them doesn’t create a better decision. (It might worsen it in fact as you second-guess a previously good decision.) But even at this saturation point, you still might be unsure what to do.

Here, I find that it helps to just:

• Recognize that moving forward is more important than making the “best” decision
• Pick a promising option and accept that I’ll deal with whatever future consequences
• Move on