Go on a decision spree

How to get small tasks done and move forward

Some decisions are consequential. But others are less so. If you have a lot of small decisions to make, one way to be more efficient — and to experience less angst — is to make a lot of decisions at once.

In other words, you can go on a decision spree.

This tip was shared with me a few years ago by Nell Wulfhart, who is a decision coach. When people are dithering about really big things, Nell challenges them to cut the amount of time they have to make a decision. You don’t necessarily have to decide in the next five minutes (some decisions do require more time than that!) But whether you give yourself a month or two weeks, you’re still going to have to decide eventually, so it’s often best to decide and move forward.

This shortening technique can also work for small decisions. “If you’re chronically indecisive,” she told me, “I recommend getting a stack of post-it notes, and on each one writing a decision you’ve been trying to make. What meal to prep for the week, what to wear to that friend’s wedding, where to go on spring break.” Then, she suggests, “set a timer for 30 minutes and just go right through the stack and make each decision right now.”

Get it done

Here’s the magic. Nell told me that you will likely see “that the decision quality is just as good as if you’d agonized over each and every one.” But the upside is that this process takes a lot less time.

I really like this idea of a decision spree for a few reasons. One is that it resembles one of my favorite time management rules, which is to “batch the little things.” Rather than filling out permission slips and those forms for HR and buying birthday presents and giving your RSVP for the networking lunch whenever you think about it, save up all these tasks for a low energy time and do them all in one fell swoop.

When you think about it, many small tasks are, in fact, decisions. If you are indecisive, those little decisions can hold up a lot.

But if you give yourself a small window and say that you have to come up with something, you can stop yourself from looking at the universe of options. You will wear whatever you have that looks good to the wedding. You will buy whatever comes up as Amazon’s recommendation for 11-year-old girls. You will just answer something on that form.

One way or another…

Because here’s the thing. Most of these small decisions don’t really matter. Certainly not as much as the big decisions in life. You can go to the networking lunch or not go. If you go, you might have a nice time and meet one or two new people. Maybe you will meet someone who wants to go into business with you and the two of you come up with a billion dollar idea but…probably not. If you don’t go, you’ll do something else that day and meet people at other things. No one really cares what you wear to that wedding as long as you don’t make a spectacle of yourself. Once you realize that, you see that what you decide for low-stakes situations really doesn’t need to be that big a deal. So you can decide quickly.

Then you can get on with your life. Much is fine either way. There will be some good things that happen and some bad things no matter what you choose. But if you make many of your decisions in a decision spree, then you’ll have time left over for other things that are generally more fun than experiencing severe angst. That sounds like a win to me.