Indecisiveness: why decisions feel so hard and how to stop being indecisive

CareOps editorial team · October 28, 2026 · 11 min read

Mental wellness information and service guidance published by CareOps.

You stand in front of the menu for ages and finally tell your friend, “Whatever you want.” For a bigger choice, such as changing jobs or moving, you have been rewriting the same pros and cons for weeks. Even after you choose, the thought “Should I have picked the other one?” follows you. This kind of indecisiveness is not a sign of weak character; it has a lot to do with what goes on in your mind when you face a choice. Here is why decisions can feel so hard and how to make them a little lighter, step by step.

What is indecisiveness? Is it a diagnosis? #

Indecisiveness is an everyday way of describing a hard time choosing or settling on something. It is not a psychiatric diagnosis on its own. In Korean, people often use a slang word that adds “disorder” to “decision,” but it is not a dictionary entry, and the standard dictionary word means “hesitating without resolve.” Because labeling an ordinary tendency a “disorder” makes some people uncomfortable, this article simply talks about finding decisions hard.

Sometimes, though, difficulty deciding shows up as part of another problem. The US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) lists difficulty concentrating, remembering or making decisions among the symptoms of depression. The first systematic study measuring indecisiveness (Frost & Shows, 1993) started from the observation that it is often mentioned as a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. So it helps to ask whether this is a long-standing tendency or a recent change.

Signs of indecisiveness #

• Small choices take a long time: even a menu item, an outfit or a gift involves lengthy comparing.
• You keep searching for information: you feel that one more review or comparison will finally make you sure, so you can't stop looking.
• You hand the decision to others: you say “You choose” and feel relieved when someone else owns the outcome.
• You put decisions off: as the date to decide approaches, you fill the time with other things and end up choosing in a rush.
• You keep looking back after choosing: you dwell on whether the option you didn't pick would have been better.
• You reverse decisions: you decide, change your mind, then go back to the start.

Having a few of these doesn't mean something is wrong. But if the time and energy you spend choosing is so large that it affects work, relationships or sleep, it is worth looking at what lies underneath. If you hand almost every decision to others and deciding alone feels frightening, the practice of making decisions on your own in dependent personality traits may also help.

Five reasons decisions feel hard #

1. Fear of regret. Every decision is about choosing one thing and also letting go of the others. The bigger the thought “the one I didn't choose might have been better” feels, the safer it seems not to choose at all. Yet while you wait, options quietly disappear, and that can become another regret.

2. Always trying to find the best option (maximizing). Schwartz and colleagues (2002) distinguished people who try to find the best possible option (maximizers) from people who choose something that is good enough by their own standards (satisficers). Across seven samples, maximizing went in the opposite direction from happiness, optimism, self-esteem and life satisfaction, and in the same direction as depression, perfectionism and regret. Maximizers were less satisfied with their purchases and compared themselves with others more. A study that followed final-year students during their job search (Iyengar et al., 2006) found that students high in maximizing landed jobs with 20% higher starting salaries, yet they were less satisfied with those jobs and felt more negative emotion throughout the search.

3. Difficulty tolerating uncertainty. Every decision leaves a part you can't know until you try. In an experiment with 49 people (Ladouceur et al., 1997), those who found uncertainty harder to tolerate asked for more clues before answering a moderately ambiguous problem. Endless searching for information can be a way of waiting until you feel certain. If your mind often races ahead to what might go wrong, also see anxiety about the future and the worrying personality.

4. Worry about mistakes and perfectionism. In Frost and Shows' (1993) study, indecisiveness went along with the side of perfectionism that worries about mistakes and evaluation; indecisive people also scored higher on procrastination and took longer to decide on an experimental task. The stronger the feeling that you must not get it wrong, the more a decision feels like a high-stakes test. The two faces of perfectionism are covered in perfectionism traits and how to ease them.

5. Too many options, or being worn out. In the well-known jam-tasting study (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000), more people actually bought something when there were 6 options rather than 24 or 30, and they were more satisfied with what they chose. However, a meta-analysis of 50 experiments (Scheibehenne et al., 2010) found an average effect close to zero, with large differences between studies. More options don't always make decisions harder, but when you are already tired or your criteria are unclear, a long list can feel overwhelming.

How to stop being indecisive: six practices #

Rather than trying to change how you feel about decisions all at once, it is more realistic to change how you decide, bit by bit. Picking just one of these practices to try this week is enough.

1. Write down “good enough” criteria first: before you start comparing, list the two or three conditions you truly need, then take the first option that meets them. It is practice in finding what clears the bar instead of hunting for the best.
2. Narrow it to three options: if you have many candidates, keep only the three closest to your conditions and cross out the rest. With less to compare, what matters becomes clearer.
3. Set a deadline and a search limit: deciding in advance, such as “I'll read reviews for 20 minutes” or “I'll decide on Friday evening,” keeps the search from going on forever.
4. Sort reversible from irreversible decisions: decide quickly on things you can change later, such as a meal or an outfit, and save your time for decisions that are hard to undo, such as moving. Most decisions are more reversible than they feel.
5. Practice small decisions on your own: make a low-stakes choice, such as lunch or a weekend walking route, within a minute and without asking anyone. Checking what actually happened afterward gradually shifts the prediction that getting it wrong would be a disaster.
6. Choose by what matters to you: when two options are close, ask “Who do I want to be?” rather than looking for the right answer. Picking the side closer to values you want to protect, such as stability, learning, ease or people, leaves you with a reason for the choice whatever the outcome.

The fifth practice puts into everyday words the CBT idea of comparing predictions with what actually happens, and the sixth reflects how acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) works with values. More on choosing values is in our ACT guide. If the same thoughts keep circling before a decision, see how to stop overthinking. For a big choice such as leaving a job, see should I quit my job? a checklist and how to decide.

When indecisiveness is linked to anxiety or depression #

If you used to choose easily but lately even small decisions feel like too much, look at your current state before your personality. NIMH lists difficulty making decisions as a symptom of depression and suggests that, when you are depressed, you delay important life decisions until you feel better and discuss decisions with people who know you well. If low mood and loss of interest have lasted more than two weeks, also check early signs of depression.

If worry before decisions keeps spiraling and takes up most of your day, read about generalized anxiety. If you can't stop checking whether you did it right and that is what slows your decisions, see OCD symptoms. A diagnosis is made in a clinical visit.

Look at your decision style with a perfectionism check #

There is no public check that measures indecisiveness by itself, but you can look at the perfectionism tied to feeling that you must pick the best. The CareOps perfectionism check is an eight-item questionnaire based on the SAPS developed by Rice and colleagues (2014). It shows “high standards” and “feeling that you fall short” as separate scores. You can take it right away, with no login.

If you want help sorting out a decision you keep circling #

CareOps Maeumi is an AI counseling app that runs sessions using therapy approaches such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). Together you can sort out the worries and criteria that come up around a decision, choose a practice such as “good enough” criteria or small decisions, and pick up how it went in the next session. Get the app

This guide shares mental wellness information. If you are in immediate danger, contact emergency services where you are. Support and contact information.