On Decisions: Creativity, Procrastination, and The Only “Wrong” Decision

Decision (n): the act of or need for making up one's mind.

This is one of seven definitions on dictionary.com, but to be frank, none of them seem to be quite fitting. You see, our framework for decision-making is all wrong in modern culture. The English word decision stems from the Latin word decidere, which literally means "to cut off."

This is what makes decisions more powerful than choices. When you make a choice, you select one of several options. When you make a decision, you cut off everything else. Decisions are more about saying "NO" than they are about saying "YES". While saying "Yes" to one thing implies saying "No" to another, each action stems from a different energy.

This is also why the process of elimination is such a powerful decision-making tool. When presented with options, the path toward truth often looks like cutting off what we know is not right for us. More often than not, what remains emerges as the most obvious and aligned option all along.

I experienced this firsthand when editing ​last week's podcast episode​. The episode is about 44 minutes long, but I initially recorded 1 hour and 15 minutes of content. That's right. I had to eliminate 30 minutes of recorded content, and to be completely honest, it was really friggin' hard.

Making decisions is especially difficult in creative endeavors, because we can so easily imagine a variety of finished products. I could have shortened the podcast to 20 minutes, extended it to 1 hour, or sliced and diced it into four mini-episodes. There was no right or wrong option, because each of these could have worked.

What would have been wrong, however, is procrastinating releasing this episode because I simply could not decide which sound bytes to cut off. Once I decided what to delete, a natural flow for the episode clearly emerged.

When it comes to creative pursuits, the only 'wrong' decision is not making a decision at all.

To be clear, the half hour of content that didn't make the cut is just as value-packed as the 44 minutes that did. But I told myself that this episode would be under 45 minutes, so I had to make some decisions. We can become so scared to make the "wrong decision" that we delay making a decision or don't make one at all (which is still a decision, btw).

Why any of this matters...

If you are reading this, then you are a creative person. Starting a business is creative. Solving problems is creative. Telling your story through your resume, college applications, or social media is creative.

Pursuing creative endeavors can be personally fulfilling. But if you want to make a positive change through whatever you bring into the world, then you're going to have to make many, many decisions. It will be hard, but worth it.

Because guess what? If you keep delaying the decision to finally act on your creative ideas, then you're deciding to delay your positive impact, too.

What will you decide?