Why is it so hard to decide? Indecisiveness, maximizing, choice overload and what helps

Some people take ages to pick a lunch order and keep wondering afterwards whether they should have picked something else. Psychologists separate hesitating over one decision from indecisiveness, a tendency to find decisions hard across many situations. The features researchers list are finding decisions burdensome, taking a long time to decide, delaying or avoiding decisions, changing your mind several times before settling, and going back over a decision and worrying about it once it is made (Cheek & Goebel, 2020).

Indecisiveness is not a diagnosis. The World Health Organization’s diagnostic guidance for ICD-11 defines it as a tendency to have difficulty making decisions or committing to a course of action, and lists it among symptoms and signs related to personality features, not among disorders (WHO, 2024). A German team who studied it experimentally also describe indecisiveness as a non-pathological trait that some cultures even regard positively (Appel & Gerlach, 2025). In Korea, a popular slang term that likens indecision to a disability is often used; it is not a diagnosis either. An article by student reporters of Hangeul Munhwa Yeondae, a Korean-language civic group, criticises the term for making light of disability and suggests saying “finding it hard to decide” or “indecisive” instead (Jeong, 2023). This guide uses “indecisiveness” and “finding choices hard”.

Research measures indecisiveness with questionnaires. In studies using the Indecisiveness Scale published in 1993 (15 items), people with high scores procrastinated more and had more general psychological difficulties, said they found decisions hard in many areas of life (social, academic, family and everyday), and took longer to decide in an experimental task (Frost & Shows, 1993; Bratko & Cetina, 2021). mind.io does not offer an indecisiveness test. This guide sets out the research on why choices feel hard, the claims and counter-claims about maximizing, too many options and “decision fatigue”, and what helps, with how strong the evidence is.

Indecisiveness tends to go together with certain personality traits. Analysing 296 people who answered an online survey in Croatian, a research team summarised earlier Big Five studies: neuroticism (emotional instability) had the highest correlation with indecisiveness, and conscientiousness and openness also showed substantial correlations. Their own study used the six-factor HEXACO model, and people were more indecisive the lower their extraversion (r = −.52) and conscientiousness (r = −.35) and the higher their emotionality (r = .26) (Bratko & Cetina, 2021). In data on 191 US university students, indecisiveness also correlated r = .57 with neuroticism and r = −.34 with life satisfaction (Diab et al., 2008). These are correlations measured at one point in time, so they do not mean personality causes indecisiveness. You can look at your own emotional sensitivity and conscientiousness with the Big Five personality test.

Finding uncertainty hard to bear, known as intolerance of uncertainty, is also consistently linked with indecisiveness (Appel & Gerlach, 2025). To test whether it is a cause, a German team randomly split 301 adults into three groups; two of them wrote advice to a fictional woman, telling her either to be more wary of uncertainty or to accept it more. Afterwards, in a lottery choice with real money at stake, those who had written advice to be more wary of uncertainty were more indecisive than those who had written advice to accept it (d = 0.54). For an important decision they actually faced, such as changing jobs, the difference went the same way but was not statistically significant (d = 0.23). The researchers also noted that a short task of writing advice about a fictional case cannot be expected to have a long-lasting effect (Appel & Gerlach, 2025). In a follow-up with 154 people diagnosed with anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorders, the same method had no direct effect on indecisiveness, only a small indirect effect through the uncertainty they felt at the time (Appel et al., 2026).

The link with perfectionism depended on which kind was measured. In the 1993 study, indecisiveness went with obsessive thinking and compulsive checking, with the side of perfectionism that worries about mistakes and other people’s judgement, and with compulsive hoarding (Frost & Shows, 1993). In a 2020 study of 279 online participants, by contrast, it was almost unrelated to a scale measuring the drive to be perfect (r = −.06), but closely linked with regret (r = .65), intolerance of uncertainty (r = .54) and fear of negative evaluation (r = .51) (Cheek & Goebel, 2020). Perfectionism has a guide of its own: Perfectionism and what helps.

Culture plays a part too. In a study comparing Chinese, Japanese and American participants, the Japanese participants reported more indecisiveness, and the researchers pointed to differing values about decisive behaviour and to thoroughness (Yates et al., 2010). So indecisiveness need not be seen only as a flaw. The J/P (judging–perceiving) axis in MBTI describes whether you are more comfortable settling decisions or keeping options open. The studies in this guide measured indecisiveness with separate scales, not with J/P, so a P result on its own does not mean you are indecisive.

One idea often brought up to explain hard choices is maximizing. In 2002, building on Herbert Simon’s theory, a team led by Barry Schwartz called people who always try to choose the best option maximizers, and people who choose an option once it clears their threshold of acceptability satisficers. Simon had argued that people in practice look not for the best but for a “good enough” option (Schwartz et al., 2002).

The team built a Maximization Scale and gave it to 1,747 people: four student groups at two US universities and one Canadian university, and three groups of adults, made up of health care workers (mostly nurses), people at a train station and prospective jurors. Higher maximization scores went with more regret across all groups (r = .52), lower happiness in the six groups where happiness was measured (r = −.25) and higher depression scores in the four groups where depression was measured (r = .34). Maximizers also reported less optimism, self-esteem and life satisfaction. The team noted that these results say nothing about the direction of cause (Schwartz et al., 2002).

Another study followed people through a job search. At 11 colleges and universities, 548 final-year students answered the first of three surveys, run from November 2001 to May 2002. Among the students who reported an accepted job offer in the last survey, those above the median on maximizing had an average salary of $44,515, about 20% more than the others ($37,085). Yet the more someone maximized, the less satisfied they were with the job they got, even with salary taken into account, and the more pessimistic, anxious, tired and depressed they said they felt throughout the search (Iyengar et al., 2006).

Later studies argued that “maximizers are unhappy” may partly come from how maximizing was measured. When the original scale was reanalysed with existing data (12 data sets in all, more than 5,800 people), it split into three parts. “Alternative search”, constantly looking for better options, and “decision difficulty” were linked with happiness, depression and optimism in the expected direction, but “high standards” for yourself and for things was not clearly related to them. In the conclusion the paper drew after adding new data from 176 students and staff at three universities, however, decision difficulty went with lower happiness, life satisfaction and optimism and more depression, while alternative search was unrelated to happiness or depression and went only with lower life satisfaction and more regret (Nenkov et al., 2008). In a study of 191 US university students, a new maximizing scale, unlike the original, was unrelated to life satisfaction (r = .04), indecisiveness (r = .05) and neuroticism (r = .01), and was related only to regret (r = .27) (Diab et al., 2008).

A 2016 review co-written by Schwartz, who built the original scale, proposed seeing maximizing as two components: the goal of choosing the best and the strategy of searching through alternatives. The goal itself does not appear to predict unhappiness, dissatisfaction with life or depression, and decision difficulty and regret are better seen as causes or consequences of maximizing than as parts of it (Cheek & Schwartz, 2016). Indeed, in two online studies (639 people in all), the “decision difficulty” items of maximizing scales and an indecisiveness scale correlated at r = .85 or more, and the researchers concluded that both tap the same underlying tendency (Cheek & Goebel, 2020). Taken together, endless comparing and struggling to decide seem more closely tied to dissatisfaction than high standards as such. Keep in mind that all of this is correlational.

The jam study is a common example when people talk about the “paradox of choice”. A tasting booth was set up in an upscale grocery store in California on two Saturdays, switching every hour between 6 and 24 jams. With 24 jams, 60% of 242 passing customers stopped at the booth; with 6, 40% of 260 did. But among the customers who stopped, about 30% (31) of those who saw 6 jams bought one, against 3% (4) of those who saw 24. In a student experiment in the same paper, people who chose from 6 chocolates rather than 30 were more satisfied with their pick (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000).

But the result has not always held up. A 2010 meta-analysis of 50 published and unpublished experiments (63 conditions, 5,036 people) found that the average negative effect of more options was virtually zero (D = 0.02, 95% confidence interval −0.09 to 0.12). When one of its authors tried to repeat the jam study in an upscale supermarket in Germany, no negative effect appeared. And people who already had clear preferences or expertise before choosing were better off with more options (Scheibehenne et al., 2010).

That does not mean choice overload never happens. A 2015 meta-analysis of 99 observations (7,202 people) reported that it was more likely when the set of options was complex, the task was difficult, people were unsure what they wanted, or they wanted to choose with as little effort as possible, and that once these conditions were taken into account, the number of options had a significant effect (Chernev et al., 2015). Read together, the two meta-analyses suggest that many options do not always stop people choosing, but under some conditions they can make choosing harder.

More options can also lead people to put the decision itself off. A 1992 study reported that when the set of options is enlarged or improved and choosing becomes a conflict, the tendency to defer the decision, look for new options or take the default can increase (Tversky & Shafir, 1992). If you keep putting decisions off, see also Procrastination and what helps.

A study often cited for “decision fatigue”, the idea that making many decisions wears down judgement, analysed 1,112 rulings made by 8 judges over 10 months on two parole boards in Israel. The share of rulings in the prisoner’s favour was about 65% at the start of the day or just after a meal break, and fell to nearly zero as the next break approached. The authors read this as mental resources being depleted by repeated decisions, while noting that they had not measured the judges’ mental resources directly (Danziger et al., 2011a).

Critics followed. Researchers from the Israeli courts’ research division and the US Federal Judicial Center pointed out that case order was not random: the board tries to finish one prison’s cases before a break, and prisoners without a lawyer are usually heard last in each session. In 227 decisions they collected, unrepresented prisoners were granted parole 15% of the time, against 35% for those with counsel (Weinshall-Margel & Shapard, 2011). The original authors replied that their results held when legal representation was added to the analysis (Danziger et al., 2011b). A 2016 simulation study concluded that “rational time management”, not starting a favourable ruling, which takes longer, just before a break, could produce a similar though somewhat smaller drop, so the original study overestimated the size of the effect; it added that this alone cannot explain all of the results (Glöckner, 2016).

Reading the study as mental depletion rests on “ego depletion” theory, the idea that self-control is a limited resource that runs down with use (Danziger et al., 2011a; Hagger et al., 2016). Yet in a preregistered replication in which 23 laboratories ran the same procedure with 2,141 people, the ego-depletion effect was small, d = 0.04, with a 95% confidence interval that included zero (−0.07 to 0.15) (Hagger et al., 2016). In a 2021 preregistered project with 36 laboratories and 3,531 people, the planned analyses were not significant (d = 0.06); only an exploratory analysis of everyone, ignoring the exclusion rules, found a very small significant effect (d = 0.08) (Vohs et al., 2021). These studies looked at performance after a self-control task, not after a run of decisions, so they did not test decision fatigue directly. You may well feel drained after agonising over a choice, but the claim that making many decisions uses up your judgement is less solidly supported than it sounds.

The suggestions below rest on different kinds of evidence. We have separated what experiments or meta-analyses tested directly from suggestions drawn from research findings. Among the sources read for this guide, none tested a method for reducing indecisiveness itself.

Set a “good enough” bar first. If you are buying a laptop, for example, write down the conditions you really need, such as budget, weight and screen size, and pick the first model that clears all of them. That is satisficing as Simon described it (Schwartz et al., 2002). People who maximized more reported more regret (Schwartz et al., 2002), and a tendency to keep searching for better options went with lower life satisfaction and more regret (Nenkov et al., 2008). These are all correlational studies, and we found no experiment that trained people to satisfice and measured the result, so this is a suggestion drawn from the research.

The less sure you are of what you want, the fewer options you should compare. In a meta-analysis, choice overload was more likely when people were unsure what they wanted and the options were complex (Chernev et al., 2015), and people with clear prior preferences actually did better with more options (Scheibehenne et al., 2010). So before you start searching, decide on two or three criteria that matter to you, use them to narrow the field to a few candidates, and then compare. Setting criteria first and narrowing the field are suggestions based on these findings; research gives no set number of options that works best.

For small decisions, set yourself defaults. Pre-selected options (defaults) have a considerable influence on what people choose: in a meta-analysis of 58 studies (73,675 people), the effect of defaults was d = 0.68, but it varied widely, and some studies found no significant or even an opposite effect (Jachimowicz et al., 2019). Those studies looked at defaults set by policymakers or companies. Applying the same idea to yourself, with rules such as “on weekdays, lunch at one of my two usual places” or “keep what I have unless something is clearly better”, is a suggestion and has not been tested directly.

Think about what else you could do with it. When people deciding whether to buy something were prompted to think of other uses for the money, they bought less often and chose cheaper options more often (Frederick et al., 2009). A meta-analysis of 39 experiments (14,005 people) confirmed the effect, but it was considerably smaller (d = 0.22) than first reported (d = 0.45 to 0.85) (Maguire et al., 2023). Weighing the time and energy spent comparing against “what else I could do with that time” is a suggestion drawn from these studies.

Once you have decided, try treating the decision as final. In an experiment with photography students, those who could swap their chosen print later liked it less than those who could not. The researchers concluded that the chance to change one’s mind gets in the way of the processes that normally make people satisfied after a decision, yet most participants wanted that chance (Gilbert & Ebert, 2002). The study measured how much people liked their photos, not whether treating decisions as final reduces indecisiveness, so this is a suggestion drawn from its result. We read only the abstract of this study, and it is no reason to give up safeguards you genuinely need, such as refunds or cancellations.

If you have been going round in circles between two truly similar options, tossing a coin is one way out. In an experiment run on a website by a University of Chicago economist, people who were struggling with a decision tossed a coin (22,511 tosses analysed). Those whose coin came up heads, meaning make the change, were 24.9 percentage points more likely than those who got tails to report two months later that they had made it. For important decisions, such as quitting a job or ending a relationship, people the coin told to make a change reported being happier six months later. The participants chose to visit the site and are far from representative, and all answers were self-reported (Levitt, 2016). It can also help to notice your first reaction to the coin’s verdict, such as “oh, not that one”. In two online experiments with 78 and 87 people choosing dishes for an imaginary five-course meal, those shown a coin’s or a die’s suggestion said they had a clearer sense of what they wanted (Jaffé et al., 2019).

If you keep putting a decision off, set a date by which you will decide, such as Friday evening, and choose with whatever information you have by then. This has not been tested for indecisiveness specifically.

If decisions have become noticeably harder than they used to be, check your mood as well. ICD-11 lists “reduced ability to concentrate and sustain attention on tasks, or marked indecisiveness” as one symptom of a depressive episode, which requires at least five symptoms, including low mood or loss of interest, for most of the day, nearly every day, for at least 2 weeks (WHO, 2024). In an online survey of 602 adults, indecisiveness was also strongly associated with depressive symptoms (Hallenbeck et al., 2022). If even decisions that used to be easy feel like too much, and low interest or energy has continued nearly every day for at least 2 weeks, look at depression symptoms and the depression check-in (PHQ-9). These self-checks are not diagnoses; they help you look at how you are doing.

If worry is stopping you deciding in many areas and has gone on for months, see anxiety symptoms and the anxiety check-in (GAD-7) as well. Indecisiveness is an often mentioned symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (Frost & Shows, 1993), and ICD-11 notes that people with prominent anankastia, a trait domain of personality disorder, have difficulty making decisions because they worry they have not considered every aspect and every alternative (WHO, 2024). But finding decisions hard is not OCD in itself. OCD is diagnosed when unwanted thoughts keep intruding (obsessions) and/or acts such as checking are repeated in response to them (compulsions), and these take up time, for example more than 1 hour a day, or cause significant distress or impairment (WHO, 2024). If that sounds familiar, read OCD: symptoms and what helps.

In anxiety-related disorders, treatment that builds tolerance of uncertainty has shown results. In a meta-analysis of 28 randomised controlled trials, evidence-based treatments reduced intolerance of uncertainty substantially more than control conditions (g = 0.89) (Miller & McGuire, 2023). We found no direct evidence on whether such treatment also reduces indecisiveness, but the experimental team above saw building tolerance of uncertainty as a promising way to reduce it (Appel & Gerlach, 2025). If indecision is seriously disrupting your daily life, rather than trying to fix it alone, talk to your doctor, a mental health professional or a university counselling service.

If feeling useless for not being able to decide has led to feeling that nothing is worth it, please do not carry that alone. If you have thoughts of ending your life, reach out to a crisis line right away: call or text 988 in the US and Canada, call Samaritans on 116 123 in the UK and Ireland, or find a line at findahelpline.com elsewhere. If you are in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services.

Q. Is being bad at making decisions an illness? A. No. Indecisiveness is not a diagnosis but a tendency related to personality (WHO, 2024). If deciding has suddenly become much harder and low mood or loss of interest has come with it for at least 2 weeks, it can be a symptom of a depressive episode, so talk to a professional (WHO, 2024).

Q. Can an indecisive personality change? A. We found no study that tested a treatment for indecisiveness itself. But in one experiment, when choosing among lotteries with real money at stake, people who had written advice to be more wary of uncertainty were more indecisive than those who had written the opposite; for a decision they actually faced the difference was not significant, and the researchers noted that a short writing task cannot be expected to have a lasting effect (Appel & Gerlach, 2025). Treatments for anxiety-related disorders substantially reduced intolerance of uncertainty (Miller & McGuire, 2023). Setting your criteria first and narrowing your options are habits you can try today.

Q. Does getting P on the MBTI mean I am indecisive? A. You cannot conclude that. J/P is a preference about how you organise life and work, and research on indecisiveness uses separate scales. Across Big Five studies, a review points to neuroticism (emotional instability) as having the highest correlation with indecisiveness (Bratko & Cetina, 2021).

Q. Are lots of options always bad? A. No. In a meta-analysis of 50 experiments, the average effect was virtually zero (Scheibehenne et al., 2010); choice overload was more likely when people were unsure what they wanted or the options were complex (Chernev et al., 2015).

Q. Don’t maximizers end up doing better? A. In one study, among final-year students who accepted a job, those high in maximizing earned about 20% more but were less satisfied with the jobs they got (Iyengar et al., 2006). The goal of wanting the best does not itself appear linked to unhappiness; endless comparison and decision difficulty seem more closely tied to dissatisfaction (Cheek & Schwartz, 2016).

Q. I hate myself for not being able to make even one decision, and I feel like disappearing. A. Please do not carry this alone. Reach out to a crisis line right away: call or text 988 in the US and Canada, call Samaritans on 116 123 in the UK and Ireland, or find a line at findahelpline.com elsewhere. If you are in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services.

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