I'm Not Indecisive. I'm Just Tired.

I know what I want. I want you to know that before we go any further. I am not out here drifting through life unable to land on a preference. I have opinions, strong ones. About most things. Often before you have finished the sentence. The problem is that I also have new opinions approximately four minutes later when you give me more information, and apparently that makes me a person who cannot make up her mind, which is not the same thing, but sure. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Here is what is actually happening. My brain does not sit lightly on decisions, it runs them. Hard. It pulls in context and history and probable outcomes and the three most likely ways this could go sideways and what I would do in each of those scenarios before I even open my mouth. So when I say “yes” and then say “actually wait”, I am not flip-flopping. I am updating. There is a difference, one is chaos, the other is just paying attention.

The Part Nobody Talks About

What nobody really names is the fatigue piece because that is the part that gets me more than the speed. By the time you ask me what I want for dinner, I have already made approximately four hundred decisions today. Some of them small. Some of them not small at all. And my brain, which does not really do anything halfway, treated all of them with the same level of seriousness it gives everything else. So when you are standing there waiting on me to pick a restaurant like it is a simple question, what you are looking at is not someone who does not know what she wants. You are looking at someone whose decision-making infrastructure is running on fumes and is now being asked to also have a preference about tacos versus Thai food.

I am going to need a minute or I am going to say tacos and then immediately wish I had said Thai. (Both outcomes are available) The other thing, the one that really gets me labeled as indecisive, is that I genuinely change my mind when I learn something new and I do not mean over the course of a week of careful reflection. I mean within the same conversation. You tell me something I did not know, my brain processes it, and my position shifts. Immediately. Because that is what you are supposed to do with new information. Apparently this is alarming to people. The expectation seems to be that you form an opinion and then you hold it like a flag regardless of what anyone says afterward, and that is called being decisive and confident. My brain did not get that memo. My brain treats every new data point as a live variable and recalculates in real time, which is actually a pretty useful feature until you are trying to finalize a plan and I am still integrating.

I am not indecisive. I am just working with a lot of information, running low on capacity, and occasionally updating my answer mid-sentence because that is what the data called for.

It Would Be Helpful If We Could All Agree to Call It What It Is

Decision fatigue is real. It is documented. It is not a personality flaw or a lack of conviction. It is what happens when a brain that takes things seriously is asked to take too many things seriously in a row without a break. Pivoting when you get new information is not weakness, it’s literally just thinking. The version of decisiveness our culture seems to want, the one where you pick fast and never waver and hold your ground even when the facts change, is not a sign of a strong mind. It is a sign of a mind that stopped listening.

Mine has not stopped listening. It is just maybe done for the day, ask me again tomorrow.