How to Use Journaling to Avoid Indecision
I am prone to disproportionally analyzing situations. The truly important things get decided by gut and the nominal decisions are debated for weeks. Decisions between those poles — which is most stuff — sometimes results in what I call Indecisive Robot Mode.
When I’m in Indecisive Robot Mode, I pace around, doing everything but really doing nothing, until my battery overheats and I collapse onto the couch. Cue Netflix.
This exact situation just happened. The wife and daughter went to the park, freeing up a couple hours on a Sunday afternoon. If it was the early morning and they were sleeping, I’d start the coffee and begin a to-do list — I’m used to being productive during those times. Same thing if I was in the office; auto-pilot kicks in. But during this unexpectedly free time — even though there’s a lengthy to-do list within an arm’s reach — I looked down and saw that my arm was suddenly metallic.
I collapsed onto the couch.
…but before grabbing the remote and turning on a Grateful Dead documentary I want to finish, I used my last shred of humanity to open up my journal. I placed the indecisiveness in my head onto the journal’s pages. Slowly, the robot receded and the human emerged.
There are infinitesimal words in English compared to the thoughts in our heads, so when you turn thoughts into words, you have to use more precision. Writing forces you to make decisions. And so it did.
