Ask HN: How to stop avoiding hard decisions? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to stop avoiding hard decisions?

7 pointsthrowout173 comments

I have made a habit of avoiding hard decisions, either leaving them until the last minute or ignoring them entirely.

This is an example of a recent, but frequent episode I have:

—-

I don't want to decline an invitation to a social event that I don't want to go to because:

1. I fear it will upset the inviter and

2. I will start to be excluded from future invitations to other events that I do want to go to

I’ll then ignore the invitation while I try to figure out how best to reply.

Over the course of the week I’ll struggle to find the phrasing to communicate 1. that I do not want to attend this specific event and 2. but I still would like to be invited to future events without it feeling rude or entitled. I’ll then start to procrastinate further with the invitation, contemplating whether I should lie with a made-up excuse to avoid upsetting the inviter and safeguard my invitations in future.

Eventually it will be too late and the event would have passed. Often the inviter is offended that I have ignored their invitation or no-shown because I’m too scared to decline the invitation out of fear or upsetting them. I might as well have just declined the invitation in the first place and burned that bridge at the start of the process because the net outcome from trying to be tactful about the situation is no different.

Do other people on here struggle with this? How do you manage these situations?

Is the core of the problem is a party? If so, then you probably should retarget your problem solving efforts from decision making in general to your party issues.

If the problem really is a decision, then you can try to split up decision into smaller parts. The first part is to schedule when you decide to accept or decline invitation, and when you give an answer to inviter. For example, you can give yourself two days to choose between accept/decline, and two days more to prepare youself to write an answer. The trick is to schedule a particular time when you start doing painful things and when you finish them. For example: tomorrow from 15:00 to 15:10. It is just ten minutes of a pain.

A schedule can help you to think about the problem in advance without pain. Or do not think in advance and do not feel yourself guilty for it. It helps also to choose between accept/decline without pain from expectancy of a painful writing of an answer.

Such a way you can reach a minimum amount of negative feelings associated with thinking about problem and making decisions, you can break the negative reinforcement loop.

1 Get a die

2 Decide which numbers on the die represent which decision

3 Roll the die

4 Use that random decision

. ...time passes...

5 You really dislike the decision made by the die? Go with the other one

6 Should you dislike the opposite too stop thinking about it and go with the decision the die made for you

7 If you still have not done anything it may mean you don't really care about making a decision, which may have deeper meaning that is far beyond what the Internet can help you with

If handling a party invitation is such a hard decision, how are you going to handle changing jobs, getting married or travelling overseas?

Everybody is different. I used to have similar problems trying to find the optimum. Eventually I gave up. A very wise person counselled me to simply be authentic. To get clarity around what I wanted and then go for it.

So to apply this principle to the dilemma you described: I would recognise that for whatever reason I didn't want to go to the specific event. I would contact the host and say "I am sorry, but I won't be able to make it your ____ event. But I am very keen to know about any future events and I hope the circumstances will allow me to attend at least some of those. Thank you for the invitation and looking forward to enjoying your company in the future."

It is unlikely that you would be pressed to give a reason for declining the invitation, but something along the lines of "a prior commitment" or "I'd rather not say" should suffice. Of course, if you have a specific reason you don't wish to go then you could share the reason ... tactfully.

I have to admit that I struggled somewhat with your example as you didn't clarify why didn't want to go. Giving a reason would have helped give you a more specific suggestion on how to handle the situation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com