Ask HN: How to stop anxiety from too many choices?

[dennisy]

The obvious answer here is to reduce choices. However the past few months I am struggling hugely with anxiety which is rendering me incapable on some days to make any real progress on my goals; startup, learning & side projects.

When the pandemic began, and we lost our clients I have found myself in a constant state of ideation and future thinking, but once I start one of these (semi-pivots) I get worried that there is a better idea and go back to the drawing board.

How does one stop this process?

[acituan]

It doesn’t have to be the number of choices creating anxiety. Maybe an existing anxiety is pushing you towards seeing more choices to block yourself from committing on one, because you are too internally conflicted.

Motivation has an internal hierarchy, you do a thing in the name of a more core thing in the name of a more core thing. But this is not a tree, you also have different parts of you wanting different, conflicting things at the same time. So a lack of decisiveness on the outside might reflect an internal conflict inside.

If you side with one side of the conflict (starting with your semi pivot), the other side of the conflict might get stronger and more polarized. Same goes for medication, it will ease your decision making at the expense of silencing certain parts of yourself.

There are good suggestions about externalizing this conflict to journals, talking to a therapist etc. I would also suggest doing less things (not siding with any of the conflicting parts for a while) and to actually listen to yourself. What is this all about? What is the core motivating factor all these parts are organized around? In the grand scheme of your life, is a startup is nothing. What do you truly value and find meaningful? Don’t be eager to come up with an answer but instead listen to yourself for insight. That might be what your anxiety is telling you anyway; “stop doing things and listen to me”.

[ProblemFactory]

Two methods that have helped me:

* Have an ideas journal. Write new ideas down there, and don't start with any of them in less than two weeks. This lets you get over the initial enthusiasm - and perhaps new better ideas will push less useful ones out of the way in that time. If something stays at the top of your list for weeks, then perhaps it is useful.

* If you are having trouble deciding between a small number of fixed options, roll the dice. The very fact that you are having trouble deciding means that (within the information available to you right now) all choices are equally good. And sometimes when you see the dice rolling and know that the decision will happen now you realise which one you want.

[egypturnash]

Also useful with dice-rolling: if you realize you absolutely hate the option the dice chose, and prefer something else, you now know what to actually get started on!

[ajot]

> And sometimes when you see the dice rolling and know that the decision will happen now you realise which one you want.

The old Mr. Bean's method to choose which shirt to carry on holiday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEJ8V_Cnx6I&t=79

[LarryMade2]

Stop shopping start doing.

- All these decisions I call shopping, where you do a lot of research but never commit. At some point you have to start working on something.

- I bet you have a few candidates for what things you want to do/use. Pick one, start using it. Only then can you figure out if that's the right choice or whether you need to do/try something else on your short list.

If you are too nervous about something because it all matters too much, then start with some throwaway thing that is related that you won't mind if it turns out a mess. Usually I pick something with a problem area that I have mainly been "shopping" for, and put the tool/language/data/etc through it's paces.

If you don't know where to start, re-create/copy something that already exists. That will reduce the need for planning for your first steps.

It's been said novelist Jack Kerouac re-typed F. Scott Fitzgerald's the Great Gatsby twice because he that it was favorite book and wanted to write like a book like that, by actively putting those words on paper he got a better understanding of how to write.

[mowsmith]

I believe it was Hunter S. Thompson who typed out The Great Gatsby and not Kerouac. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/03/07/believer

[cutler]

The Kerouac anecdote is amazing and strongly supports the learn-by-typing approach to programming.

[mikekchar]

My advice is to lower the value of ideas. A lot of time people think, "If only I had a good idea I would be successful". You will see other people saying things like, "Buy my good idea!". But really, good ideas are a dime a dozen. Good ideas, bad ideas... it actually doesn't make much difference. What makes the difference is execution and timing.

For things that take a long time, timing is essentially random. The world is chaotic. Had I known everyone and their dog would be locked down in their houses for months on end, I would have built something to cater to them. But of course, there is no way to know. I find it amusing that just before the pandemic there was a thread on HN talking about overvalued unicorns and Zoom was up near the top of the list. What would need to happen to make Zoom a household name, people asked?

To be successful, really what you need is execution and to have the patience to wait until what you are doing is relevant. Of course there is the fear that it will never be relevant. However, if you accept the thesis that the good idea is not valuable in itself, then you realise that it is not really valuable to pivot without a really good reason. A good idea that is never relevant is just as worthless as a bad idea that is never relevant. However, even a bad idea that is executed very well and ready when the opportunity arises can be successful.

[chrisandchips]

It’s a bit hard to give concrete advice without knowing more but it sounds like the anxiety is linked to a fear of failure?

You should try to weigh the pros and cons of your options as best you can, of course. You should also try to break down your tasks into achieveable goals as much as possible so as to build up your confidence as you achieve them and lessen your anxiety.

But at a certain point, you can only know and project so much about your options unless you actually try them. When you choose something, dont quit when you start to doubt if theres a better way. You aren’t actually equipped to make that evaluation until you have tried and succeeded/failed with your current path. Its a good thing to fail, it teaches you a lot going forward.

I think the real problem you need to address is your difficulty accepting risk, which i suspect is tied to a fear of failure. Start trying to convince yourself that mistakes are good things.

When choosing a path, plan benchmarks where you can step back and evaluate concrete work up until that point. Only consider changing your path if you have concrete evidence to prove that you’re going astray. And ask others for their opinions along the way, don’t do it all alone

Good luck

[runawaybottle]

There’s a lot of mental gymnastics that are stopping the OP from attacking the problem. Fear of failure, perfectionism, and putting ideas on a pedestal are constructs of the ego.

The ego is most likely framing the entire situation as ‘What is this grand pivot that, if executed properly, will change everything?’. Very pretentious, don’t let your ego frame things in that manner.

[loceng]

Fear of failure which maybe is tied to "shoulds, wouldas, couldas" - 'I "should" have completed X' and if haven't completed it will instil a thinking pattern of guilt and shame, beating yourself up; solution is to catch yourself if you say "should", perhaps first having someone else point it out to you in conversation so you can start catching yourself, and then replacing "should" with say "need." It's subtle but it can be dramatic.

[saeranv]

>> When you choose something, dont quit when you start to doubt if theres a better way. You aren’t actually equipped to make that evaluation until you have tried and succeeded/failed with your current path.

This is something I learned from my former boss (director of research): Don't try and evaluate your experiment before it's finished. See it through before checking your hypothesis.

[K0SM0S]

Personally:

- see the first step, the very next step, and that's it. You don't need to know what step 2,748 is about let alone how to solve it to take the next door. (formally: no premature optimization). All you need is the end-goal (general direction) and the next step to move forward, at all times. This considerably narrows the magnitude of freedom/choice locally, which feels comforting.

- Anxiety is "nostalgia about the future". Let that sink in for a minute. It's a "FOMO" regarding a desirable state that you have not yet encountered. There's a word for a more positive take of a slightly different thing: "saudade". In this I find there's a middle ground of acceptance and longing that strikes the right balance to keep a positive mind about the future.

- Make a decision, and stick to it. In other words, be quick to decide but slow to change. The trick in life is not to "do what you love" (or make the decisions you think are right: spoiler, you'll be wrong 50% of the time). The trick is to "love what you do", to learn that mindset, which is how we give a real chance to the paths we take (not half-ass it, not work actively against your own success). If you learn to love all that you do, then suddenly the stakes are very different, and good/bad decisions are more complex, more shaded. That's good, like increasing resolution to better "see". It becomes easier to navigate, like your vessel has a better map.

- Every single decision you made in life, you did your best at the time with the information you had. Nobody tries to fail on purpose, nobody wants to make the wrong decision. Therefore, 1. there is no point in regret, only in learning lessons; 2. Hindsight is 20/20 but has no practical purpose except implemented as action in the present (to solve a real current problem).

Now this is how I "tame" my own mind, when thinking of those things. Stoicism was my entry point into such self-control, self-knowledge to begin with.

[azhu]

One does not stop it unless one never wants to generate any new ideas. What one stops is the imbalance and the sort of proactive procrastination it leads to, of always thinking about starting and never starting, and one does that by executing with commitment on some of the ideas.

That'll chip away at that FOMO anxiety because you'll be focused on what you're doing rather than what you're not doing. At the end of the day, it's just going to be exposure therapy to the situation where you know you're not fully capturing all possibilities that gets you over that fear. You absolutely can't predict the future so you absolutely can't ever capture all the possibilities. Perfection is the enemy of choice.

Don't make it complicated in your head, despite how loudly your gut screams at you that the risk warrants infinitely granular consideration -- just start and trust the idea(s). If you have too much anxiety, surround yourself with a support system you trust that you can rubber duck how solid the ideas are with. The rest will work itself out.

[tuna-piano]

Good enough vs Best

I have similar problems sometimes- and remind myself the power of "good enough". Striving for "the best" will often leave you unsatisfied. So instead of thinking "which is better?" think "is this one good enough?"

"If you ever aren't sure if you attended the very best party or bought the very best computer, just settle for "good enough." People who do this are called "satisficers," and they're consistently happier, he's found, than are "maximizers," people who feel that they must choose the very best possible option."

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/03/the-power...

[hanniabu]

I also struggle with this. I know I can rate the pros/cons of each and tally the points, but I also struggle from deciding which items should be weighed higher than others. I'm also aware that a lot of choices aren't as critical as I make them out to be but I somehow can't seem to get over this mental hurdles. For some background I'm very analytical, precise, and organized and a lot of times I absolutely hate it because it can be debilitating in normal aspects of life as well.

[mkaic]

Agreed. I think stepping back and forcing myself to look at a “big picture” view of my situation and my choices has been helpful for me. It’s like you said, many of your choices probably aren’t as critical as your brain tells you they are—-I know that’s the case for me. A lot of times it really doesn’t matter whether I take path A or path B, as long as I’m still moving forward.

[Waterluvian]

I'm not sure this is advice on _how_ but what I do is stop searching once I find a valid option.

Life's too short to worry about, "what if an even better option is just over the hill?" Nope. This one's good.

I do this with phones, shampoo, and even a car this season.

[atlantique]

This was really helpful. Thank you.

[pjc50]

Flip a coin.

You don't have to stick with the result, but just try it on mentally for a second and feel your response. If your immediate response to the decision that had been made for you is negative, then discard that choice entirely.

Or ask the debug rubber duck.

[ac29]

"The best thing is to do the right thing; the next best is to do the wrong thing; the worst thing of all things is to stand perfectly still"

(taken from the wikipedia article on this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis)

I think this is pretty good advice - in a way, the only bad thing to do is nothing. Failure is the best learning tool, so make a choice and commit to it. When exploring a new field, working on a new project, or starting a new company, no amount of thinking about things is going to land you on the perfect decision every time. Its better to be decisive, even if it means making random decisions. Just be sure to take time to execute your decisions, time to reflect on how they went, and the courage to let them go if they dont work.

[vibrolax]

Doing the wrong thing is not categorically better than doing nothing. If you're paralyzed on one subject, change focus to something else you can make progress on.

[jmount]

First anxiety is real, you must/can manage it.

My trick is externalize and slow down ideas.

Instead of immediately pursuing ideas, enter small descriptions of them in a journal. That tends to cut down on the effort to remember them.

Also set an inverse deadline, that you are not going to start anything before the inverse deadline (and maybe even after).

[scrivna]

I use the inverse deadline trick all the time for purchases. For example I decide I want the new “Apple gadget” that’s $1k+ or some other thing that I probably desire but don’t “need”. Then I tell myself I can buy it if I wait 30 days and A) Still want it. B) Have thought about it multiple times since the initial desire. Most times this stops me from impulse buying things a I don’t need. I prefer to live frugally and with less belongings, so it has worked well for my personality YMMV.

[nsl73]

I use the inverse deadline strategy for large purchases, and it’s been very successful. If I want to buy something over $X I spend N days before the purchase ($3,000 and three months for me). This helps reduce some of the emotional aspects of making large purchases for me.

[mkaic]

I’ve never heard of an inverse deadline, but I find the concept intriguing. Kind of like a controlled, conscious procrastination?

[dennisy]

I really like this idea, do you use anything specific for the ideas journal?

[dependsontheq]

It might just be anxiety and not something related to your choices - I recommend seeing a therapist and thinking about treatment options. I was in the same situation and looking back it had less to do with my external stressors and more with me.

[keyle]

Do them all; all the ideas. If your body says stop, you know it's not the right way. If it still feels right after 2-3 days, it's probably right.

I also found that a spreadsheet with:

         | difficulty | est. time | benefit
  idea         5            5          5
  idea         3            2          4
  idea         2            1          2
  idea        ...
  idea
   

... helps cutting out a lot of undesirable long term ideas.

Make you own columns but basically it's about managing time, risk, feasibility and potential outcome.

HTH.

[jennyyang]

Just because you have choices doesn't mean that each choice has the same level of opportunity. Sort the list of choices based on level of opportunity or probability of success and just work on the list in that order.

A good leader or a good strategizer can pretty quickly figure out which choices has the best opportunities and narrows down based on that. If you have a hard time determining the level of opportunity or the probability of success, then THIS is the skill you need to develop.

[PeterisP]

Unhealthy anxiety triggered by too many choices is not really caused by the existence of the choices, but by an unhealthy mental reaction towards these choices.

And it won't be fixed by reducing the choices (though the symptoms may be temporarily reduced that way), a fix needs address the underlying condition(s). To put it clearly, I'm not a doctor and I'm definitely not your doctor, but in general "anxiety which is rendering me incapable on some days to make any real progress on my goals" is not a healthy reaction to any number of choices, and "I have found myself in a constant state of ideation" is not a state that should be accepted or adapted to, these things need fixing.

Consulting a mental health professional is the proper way to check if there are underlying conditions and if so, what's the best way to treat it - an internet forum can only make some guesses based on incomplete information. If that's not an option for some reason, things like meditation or self-CBT sometimes help some people who have anxiety problems.

[stevebmark]

From the book "Extreme Ownership" (a pretty good read), for how to deal with maximum stress situations when there are multiple things to worry about:

Take a breath. Look around. Make a call.

With an emphasis on taking care of the most pressing things first. But if you don't know the most pressing thing, you can still take input from what's around you to help make a decision.

[h0l0cube]

This is going to seem overly prescriptive, but please bear with me:

    - open your most basic text editor
    - make a file called 'todo.txt' 
    - add a dot point: '- plan out ideas' 
    - now make a file for each of your ideas 
      - write a '- plan' dot point, along with sub-points that outline your milestones 
      - write a '- first steps' dot point, along with sub-points

By this point, it will emerge that some of your ideas are more feasible or more interesting... for now. Grow each of your ideas at once, or focus on one, but reduce cognitive load by turning those ideas swimming around in your head into concrete plans of action.

   - keep a log of your next steps in the 'todo.txt'

.. and don't hate yourself if you don't do them straight away, or at all. That's completely pointless.

[LeonB]

Decision work is hard work.

Where there's a decision to be made, put that as a serious item on your todo list. Then get it done -- as in -- do the necessary research to make a good decision, make the decision, and then tick it off. You'll be less likely to go back on it, because you know you've done the work.

Decision work is hard work.