
Ask HN: How to stop avoiding hard decisions? - throwout17
I have made a habit of avoiding hard decisions, either leaving them until the last minute or ignoring them entirely.<p>This is an example of a recent, but frequent episode I have:<p>—-<p>I don&#x27;t want to decline an invitation to a social event that I don&#x27;t want to go to because:<p>1. I fear it will upset the inviter and<p>2. I will start to be excluded from future invitations to other events that I do want to go to<p>I’ll then ignore the invitation while I try to figure out how best to reply.<p>Over the course of the week I’ll struggle to find the phrasing to communicate 1. that I do not want to attend this specific event and 2. but I still would like to be invited to future events without it feeling rude or entitled. I’ll then start to procrastinate further with the invitation, contemplating whether I should lie with a made-up excuse to avoid upsetting the inviter and safeguard my invitations in future.<p>Eventually it will be too late and the event would have passed. Often the inviter is offended that I have ignored their invitation or no-shown because I’m too scared to decline the invitation out of fear or upsetting them. I might as well have just declined the invitation in the first place and burned that bridge at the start of the process because the net outcome from trying to be tactful  about the situation is no different.<p>Do other people on here struggle with this? How do you manage these situations?
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ordu
Is the core of the problem is a party? If so, then you probably should
retarget your problem solving efforts from decision making in general to your
party issues.

If the problem really is a decision, then you can try to split up decision
into smaller parts. The first part is to schedule when you decide to accept or
decline invitation, and when you give an answer to inviter. For example, you
can give yourself two days to choose between accept/decline, and two days more
to prepare youself to write an answer. The trick is to schedule a particular
time when you start doing painful things and when you finish them. For
example: tomorrow from 15:00 to 15:10. It is just ten minutes of a pain.

A schedule can help you to think about the problem in advance without pain. Or
do not think in advance and do not feel yourself guilty for it. It helps also
to choose between accept/decline without pain from expectancy of a painful
writing of an answer.

Such a way you can reach a minimum amount of negative feelings associated with
thinking about problem and making decisions, you can break the negative
reinforcement loop.

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Karnickel
1 Get a die

2 Decide which numbers on the die represent which decision

3 Roll the die

4 Use that random decision

. ... _time passes_...

5 You _really_ dislike the decision made by the die? Go with the other one

6 Should you dislike the opposite too stop thinking about it and go with the
decision the die made for you

7 If you still have not done anything it may mean you don't really care about
making a decision, which may have deeper meaning that is far beyond what the
Internet can help you with

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CyberFonic
If handling a party invitation is such a hard decision, how are you going to
handle changing jobs, getting married or travelling overseas?

Everybody is different. I used to have similar problems trying to find the
optimum. Eventually I gave up. A very wise person counselled me to simply be
authentic. To get clarity around what I wanted and then go for it.

So to apply this principle to the dilemma you described: I would recognise
that for whatever reason I didn't want to go to the specific event. I would
contact the host and say "I am sorry, but I won't be able to make it your ____
event. But I am very keen to know about any future events and I hope the
circumstances will allow me to attend at least some of those. Thank you for
the invitation and looking forward to enjoying your company in the future."

It is unlikely that you would be pressed to give a reason for declining the
invitation, but something along the lines of "a prior commitment" or "I'd
rather not say" should suffice. Of course, if you have a specific reason you
don't wish to go then you could share the reason ... tactfully.

I have to admit that I struggled somewhat with your example as you didn't
clarify why didn't want to go. Giving a reason would have helped give you a
more specific suggestion on how to handle the situation.

