Not long ago, I read somewhere that clutter is just a pile of deferred decisions. OMG. So many things began to make sense: clutter, ever-growing to-do lists… That paper over there? If I could just decide where to put it, it’d be put away already. That list of items to do for the house? Yep, if I could decide how to tackle them, they’d be a piece of cake. This thing I need to do for work, but something is stopping me? There’s a decision somewhere in there that I’m deferring.
I’ve known since I took my first Myers-Briggs test as a teenager and learned that the “P” in my type stood for Perceiving, rather than the “J” alternative, Judging, that I can struggle with decision-making. By deferring decisions “for another time,” I thought I was doing myself a favor. And surely, at times, there is a kindness in not forcing onesself to decide everything here and now. But as I survey all the undone stuff around me, nay, all the deferred decisions, I wonder: what have I been doing to myself?
Nowadays, I try and notice when I’m deferring a decision, and ask myself whether that’s the right thing to do. Is it the kind thing to do to future me? Sometimes the decision needs to be ferreted out of the bigger picture. Uncovering that inflection point, and just making the damn decision, can go a long way to unsticking what’s stuck.
What are some decisions you’ve deferred? Are there ones you systematically defer? What if you dealt with these differently? How would your life or work change?