Reasons Why People Delay in Making Decisions

Decision making can be a tough job and at times, people find themselves feeling paralyzed while making a decision. There are several reasons why people delay in making decisions. Some of the possible reasons are being discussed as follows;

Fear

Decisions generally involve several factors or moving parts and fear can play a major role by attaching itself in all of those. If any individual is afraid of someone or something, it will affect his/her decision making procedure.

Over-analysis

Being an over thinker can hamper someone’s decision making procedure as he/she will think over and over before undertaking any action. At times, this can create an issue and the individual cannot even get out from the processing period (Hwang and Abu Syed 2012).

Lack of confidence

  At times, people lack confidence and stop making decisions. They feel that their steps can end up into something worse. They start convincing themselves and limit their decisions.

Doubt

Doubt creeps in and often slams the doors of our feelings and thoughts. Doubt hampers the decision procedure and makes people coward. Doubt conveys that the individuals are not ready to make any decision and make them feel that they are not capable of doing so (Pettigrew 2014).

There are various factors which come into play while taking difficult decisions. Moreover, there are several ways to approach the dynamics. However, it is important to conduct a research before taking a proper decision. The benefits of delaying a decision are that it helps in giving a chance to enlist support and help from the people who have already crossed the difficult bridges of decision making. It gives the individual a chance of conducting a thorough research and making a plan to evaluate the overall objectives. Moreover, it will give the individual a chance to rethink the strategies by considering options and seeking support from others. In addition to this, delaying a decision may also help the individual in reviewing the intentions (Velasquez and Patrick 2013).

However, there are certain risks in delaying decisions. It is a time taking procedure and an individual may end up taking some extra time to think over a particular incident. This may result into a lot of over-analyzing, prevarication and loss of confidence. Most importantly, it can lead to loss of several opportunities and the individual may fall behind, while trying to decide. It should be kept into consideration that at times, decisions may go right and at others, it may go wrong. The luck factor plays a major role in this and sometimes, it can be due to some outside influences or circumstances (Chai, James and Eric 2013).

Benefits and Risks of Delaying Decisions

Decision making is something which every individual does every day. However, on sharing one of my personal experiences of delaying a decision, I found out that there were both risks and benefits of it. Once, I got a call for interview in an organization. I was not sure of joining the company and ended up taking the risk of rejecting the offer. However, I got highly benefitted as few months later I got an opportunity at a highly reputed company, which offered me better salary and incentives.

Once my friend decided to buy a mobile phone with great features; however, he decided to delay his decision as the mobile phone was highly priced. Few days later, a new model of a different brand was launched and fortunately, the rate was quite reasonable. My friend without any hesitation quickly made a decision of buying the phone and got highly benefitted. Therefore, delaying decisions proved to be beneficial for him.

Creative individuals may showcase a great deal of curiosity regarding various things. They have a tendency of constantly asking questions about everything and have broader interests in various unrelated areas. However, creative people possess several attitudes which are discussed as follows;

Curiosity

Creative individuals are highly curious and have an urge to know more. They are out of the box thinkers and have interests of knowing the unknown. They constantly search for new concepts and ideas. Their curiosity level is high and it helps them find out new things (Vessey et al. 2014).

Seeing problems as acceptable and interesting

Creative people see problems as a normal and natural part of their lives. In fact, creative individuals often have a fascination with the problems and they are drawn to them.

Confronting challenges

Majority of the creative individuals have the tendency of facing new challenges or crisis situations. Instead of running away, they face new challenges and also find the ways of overcoming those.

Constructive discontent

Creative people have an awareness of what is wrong with the surroundings around them. Moreover, they are highly constructive regarding the awareness and will not allow themselves to become stuck into anything. In addition to this, they take the discontent as a motivation of doing something creative as well as constructive (Runco and Selcuk 2012).

Optimism

Creative people are hopeful as well as confident about their future. They are generally optimistic in nature. The creative individuals hold belief that almost all the problems can be solved. They prefer taking new challenges and solve them (Mumford et al. 2012).

Attitudes of Creative Individuals

Perseverance

Creative individuals have the ability of sticking onto their ideas and check them through, even if it gets harder to cope up. Moreover, they have the ability to see a challenge or problem and its probable solutions. Their flexible imagination power helps them bring in several ideas and concepts together (Florida 2014).

My father is a very creative person and possesses several attitudes of creativity. Firstly, he has ultimate curiosity of knowing more and the habit of asking questions all the time. Whenever, he discovers or sees something new, he takes an extra effort of learning everything about it, how it works and how it will benefit others. Secondly, he likes taking risks and new challenges every day. He does not have the tendency of running away from challenges; instead tackle them in a positive manner. He does not escape from problems; rather treat them as new challenges. The most creative persons have great capabilities of solving problems. Moreover, he is not afraid of experimenting new things. Thirdly, he is a risk taker and loves experimenting new things.

Fourthly, my father is very optimistic in nature and believes that almost all the problems of the world can be solved, if adequate steps are taken at the right time and place. He knows how to accept as well as give constructive criticism. Not only this, he has the ability of accepting criticism and also knows how to turn those into opportunities. He also has the ability of giving constructive criticism. In addition to this, generating a huge number of solutions and ideas to the questions and problems is an easier thing for my father. Very often, he offers his friends with unusual, clever and unique responses. Last but not the least; he has a keen sense of humor and at times, exhibits a great deal of intellectual playfulness.

References

Chai, Junyi, James NK Liu, and Eric WT Ngai. “Application of decision-making techniques in supplier selection: A systematic review of literature.” Expert Systems with Applications 40, no. 10 (2013): 3872-3885.

Florida, Richard. The rise of the creative class–revisited: Revised and expanded. Basic Books (AZ), 2014.

Hwang, C-L., and Abu Syed Md Masud. Multiple objective decision making—methods and applications: a state-of-the-art survey. Vol. 164. Springer Science & Business Media, 2012.

Mumford, Michael D., Kelsey E. Medeiros, and Paul J. Partlow. “Creative thinking: Processes, strategies, and knowledge.” The Journal of Creative Behavior 46, no. 1 (2012): 30-47.

Pettigrew, Andrew M. The politics of organizational decision-making. Routledge, 2014.

Runco, Mark A., and Selcuk Acar. “Divergent thinking as an indicator of creative potential.” Creativity Research Journal 24, no. 1 (2012): 66-75.

Velasquez, Mark, and Patrick T. Hester. “An analysis of multi-criteria decision making methods.” International Journal of Operations Research 10, no. 2 (2013): 56-66.

Vessey, William B., Jamie D. Barrett, Michael D. Mumford, Genevieve Johnson, and Brett Litwiller. “Leadership of highly creative people in highly creative fields: A historiometric study of scientific leaders.” The Leadership Quarterly 25, no. 4 (2014): 672-691.