Let's say decisions fall along two axes, into roughly four quadrants:
^
|
+-----+-----+
| | |
| II | I |
| | |
difficulty +-----+-----+
| | |
| III | IV |
| | |
+-----+-----+->
importance
Identical decisions are clearly going to fall into different buckets for everyone, so I'm just going to consider my perspective here.
I think these are probably the most fluid or interchangeable categories, in that it's quite easy to take something unimportant and spend so much time overthinking that it rockets up in difficulty. I don't know about other professions, but this is quite prevalent in software engineering, and is usually referred to as bikeshedding. Some of the most common decisions I would place here are:
And with the ubiquity of reviews and ratings, and the overwhelming abundance of options, I think any kind of shopping or searching (e.g. books, movies, products) can also find itself in quadrant II.
I used to think that ambivalence here was a virtue, because I was being polite and allowing someone with a stronger opinion to choose. But in the last few years I've realized that making these decisions--while maybe individually trivial--does cause mental burden, that it's usually the same people (and personalities) making the decisions over and over, and that they typically appreciate when someone else steps in. So I've been trying to be more decisive where possible, even if it's just throwing something random at the wall and seeing if it sticks.
For a specific example: I can't remember the source (maybe it was Thinking, Fast and Slow?), but I vageuly remember reading at some point that scheduling is (unintuitively) more successful when fewer options are provided. So instead of, say, sending a whenisgood link to everyone, you'd just ask if Friday at 10PM or Saturday at 9PM works. The latter requires a whole lot less effort from the recipient to respond.
There have been a surprisingly large number of decisions that fell into this quadrant for me. I tend to have strong gut feelings, and can be, unfortunately, pathologically stubborn about them. The major examples I can think of are choosing a university, accepting a job offer, applying to PhD programs, and entering previous relationships. I can be prone to over-thinking, but these all came quite naturally: attending college out-of-state, working with Rust at a healthcare startup, and, fingers crossed, applying to schools in the fall! But uhhh I guess my relationship track record has been mediocre at best, primarily due to my immaturity, so definitely have lost some faith in my gut there.
Religious doubt occupies by far the most space here, with perhaps career goals coming in second. I think these decisions are characterized by a lot of nuance and uncertainty, such that I can spend a long time thinking about them and end up with no satisfying answers.
Specifically for religion, I have lots of obvious shortcomings where I'm not living for Christ, surrendering everything to Him, and loving God. I see it, and I think about it, but ultimately feel this kind of paralysis where I'm not capable of making the decision to throw the things of this world away and follow Jesus.
Recently, Jane suggested this book called Paradoxology: Why Christianity Was Never Meant to Be Simple, which I just finished reading. It was a thoughtful treatment of the main questions people typically have regarding the Bible and the nature of God. I appreciated that Kandiah didn't attempt to come up with trite or hand-wavy solutions, but acknowledged, like the title suggests, that these are paradoxical situations (at least from our human perspective) that we'll need to accept and wrestle with indefinitely. This makes sense to me, but it's as frustrating as ever that we can read and study and pray without ever knowing with certainty.
I guess that's ultimately what faith is--deciding in spite of the unknown--but what does it look like to make that decision?
Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"
Mark 9:24
Anyway, here I go thinking and rambling again without being able to settle on anything.