The Upside of Indecisiveness

What’s your favorite song? What do you want for dinner? What do you want to do this weekend? These questions might seem easy and trivial, but they’re an indecisive person’s nightmare. Some people might know the feeling – when faced with a basic choice they’ll likely weigh the pros and cons, ask everyone they know about their opinions, and finally come up with the conclusion that they still don’t know. It’s exhausting and frustrating, and it definitely makes daily life more difficult, but there may be some hidden benefits to indecisiveness.

Being indecisive allows for more open-mindedness. This proves beneficial in a variety of ways. For instance, when picking a side on an issue, an indecisive person would take longer to decide, but would better appreciate the complexities of the matter and truly think through both sides before making a decision. Therefore, they would have more empathy and understanding towards the other side of the argument, understanding that the opposing side, in fact, has completely valid points as well. 

Moreover, as humans, it’s necessary to take time to examine our beliefs and make sure what we’re doing is actually the best choice for us. This is difficult for most people – inspecting the values one holds dear comes with the risk of finding out they’re wrong, after all – but indecisive people never stop doing it. They spend a huge portion of their time questioning their decisions, and while “Should I really have ordered that strawberry ice cream?” isn’t exactly worth pondering at 1:00 am, they also spend time contemplating the bigger beliefs which are important to review.

Finally, decisive people don’t necessarily make better decisions than those who need a little more time. People have long assumed that so-called “satisficers,” or decisive people, make better decisions than “maximizers,” also known as indecisive people. However, a recent study from the University of Connecticut found that maximizers are more “future-oriented” than satisficers, and therefore might end up more successful in life. Researchers measured whether indecisive and decisive people valued short-term or long-term rewards through asking them to make choices such as whether they would rather have $50 that day or $100 a year later. Indecisive individuals strongly leaned towards the delayed reward of $100. Their answer to this question, as well as others, led the researchers to conclude that “maximizers” were more “future oriented,” meaning that they make their decisions based on how it will impact them in the long term. Next, they asked the incomes and lifetime savings of both groups in the study. Indecisive people’s logic of long term gratification seemed to hold true in real life, as they had higher salaries and savings overall.

Ultimately, while being indecisive may make it harder to decide which movie to watch or what color shirt to wear, it makes it easier to learn, grow, and change as a person, and that definitely pays off.