Starting one of these newsletters can be the hardest part of the process. How to start? Do I write about something personal or something I have been struggling with or something that I think is interesting? This morning, I woke up with the overwhelming feeling that I need to clear my plate. Not of food but of indecisiveness.
This is the enemy of a lawyer and honestly for most people. Dithering is a word that Warren Buffett used in a newsletter as he apologized to his investors for slow decision making. You might have suffered from analysis paralysis but for me the enemy of my decision making comes from having too many choices or avenues to explore. I pile up cases and then I suffer from a pile of halfway or half-baked situations when the only thing the case needs is a decisive plan of attack. Honestly, the feeling of having a number of progress projects makes me feel busy when actually, I am not “busy.” I might look busy similar to when George Costanza devised to look annoyed as a way to feign busy so co-workers would think he was overworked. Things pile up when indecision reigns. They teeter on the brink of action like a kid at the top of a slide. You can get hooked on the comfort of half done projects. It takes the courage of decision to choose a path and implement a solution to conclusion. Incomplete tasks are a warm blanket of inefficiency.
I think the fear isn’t about the right solutions. I think the biggest fear of deciding to do something is the period of time after something is done when you are waiting for the next task. That emptiness can be scary. That anticipation can be more anxiety producing than the gnawing feel of indecision comforting us from a pile of stale tasks. So, we choose what we are comfortable with instead of the decisions that push us into anxiety. We choose the lesser of the two fears. The lesson is to act. Decide, step forward and implement!
Albert R. Hartley
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