Don't Dither

advice for The Youths

Dithering is also an image processing technique

Several times now, I have listened to someone, usually younger than me, debating a big decision, and (explicitly or implicitly), looking for advice, in a certain way that follows a pattern.

In the prototypical case, this is a pretty normal kind of decision that people make all the time — whether to quit a job, get married, move to a new city, start a company, have a kid, etc. A major life change, but not a super unusual or inherently questionable proposition.

And again, in conversations that fit this pattern, what I notice is that everything the person expresses indicates they want to make this change. They only say positive things about it. They seem eager and hopeful. They give reasons in favor of doing it, and reasons against not doing it.

But they have not, themselves, noticed that they want to do it. They haven’t picked up on what they sound like from the outside, which is blazingly obvious even to someone who’s just met them.

So, pretty much every time, I say “Sounds like you really want to do this! You should go for it!”

And then they’re often like “but I’m not suuuuure.” And I have to kind of egg them on and tell them they should totally do the thing.

Why do I do this?

The thing is, I’m not a fortune-teller. I actually have no idea, objectively, if some person I’ve never met would make a good spouse for you. Or if quitting your job will work out well for you. In a few cases I have experience in a loosely analogous situation that I’m drawing from, but mostly I’m clueless. You know way more about your own life than I do. I only have one piece of information that you don’t — how you look and sound to me, as we’re having this conversation.

And, in a fair number of cases, you guys look and sound like you really want to do a thing, and are just hesitating for no good reason that you can think of.

This is dithering.

It’s not really doubt. If you seriously doubted whether this was a good decision, you’d be looking for information that could go either way. You’d be interested in learning how it might go wrong, or you might be weighing reasons to do the thing against reasons not to do it.

But often that’s not what I see. I see someone give a list of plausible reasons in favor of doing the thing, and a visible pull towards doing the thing, and there’s literally nothing pointing in the opposite direction. I guess they’re just looking for permission to do it, or seeking validation, or waiting for a sign for the universe that it’s time. There are no actual obstacles! They just don’t feel “sure” yet.

And dithering looks quite unattractive from the outside. It’s almost an irresistible compulsion to try to get someone over this hesitant phase, this mode where they’re obviously restraining themselves from what is obviously their natural impulse, and get them to Make A Decision Already.

You want to do the thing. You think doing the thing is the right move. I can’t promise you that you’re right! But I do have a sort of faith that people can’t, in practice, do much better than following their own integrated judgment and desire.

To put it more superstitiously, even if it is a bad move, it’s a bad move that you kind of “have to make”. It’s a necessary part of how your life must unfold, given that you are you.

And to put it less superstitiously, it’s important for development, learning, human flourishing, all that stuff, to move forward with your life, to take on the “natural” next challenge or opportunity that “advances the plot” and will require you to learn and change. You are not going to get out of life 100% unscathed; nobody is wholly untouched by regret or adversity. So you might as well make the decision you want to make.

In particular, I far more often see young people underrate experimentation than overrate it. And this makes sense; if you’ve had very few life experiences thus far, it’s easy to imagine “this is basically How The World Is; if I make a change in my life it probably won’t get any better than this.” Whereas actually, you have tried almost nothing yet and anything you’re dissatisfied with is probably fixable if you change something about the basic conditions of your life. (Like: where you live, what you work on, what your daily routine is like, who your close relationships are with, what medical interventions you’ve tried, etc.) I don’t want to downplay adversity that’s beyond people’s control, but in my observation “if you’re unhappy, make a change, no really, actually switch up what you’re doing and try something you’ve never tried before” isn’t just good advice for people with charmed lives — it can also work out well for people who have quite genuine problems.

Now, while I do genuinely think “don’t dither” is good advice, it’s admittedly a bit contaminated by the self-interest of the advice-giver; dithering just provokes so much impatience that we can’t resist telling you to get over it.

The thing is, dithering is unattractive because it’s tediously predictable from the outside. From the inside, as you yearn to do X but hesitate, there’s intense and meaningful tension; from the outside, it’s painfully boring watching someone slowly try to psych themselves up to do something that they’ve already on some level “decided” to do. It’s also awkward to watch someone try to hide a part of themselves that you can clearly see from the outside. The “full-fledged”, brazen version of almost any personality or disposition is more appealing than an incoherent, weak attempt to stifle it.¹ Being yourself really is more charming than trying to be anyone else.²

Which is, itself, another reason not to dither!

Now, to some extent, it’s easier said than done. There’s a process you have to go through to make a decision, and if you can’t do it any faster than you’re doing it, then you just have to go at your own pace. But using “skip to the end” as a mantra can sometimes be helpful. If you get to the point where you actively prefer getting to the point quickly and Moving Right Along, rather than idealizing indecision as some sort of prolonged “innocence” that can keep you from being tarnished by Time; if you can empathize with the outside perspective that finds your dithering a bit annoying and the ineluctable desires of your heart entirely lovable; then you can sometimes hurry it up a little bit.

1. Balancing is not stifling. Stifling is when you try to not be so X. Balancing is what happens when you’re all the way X, and you actually experience the consequences of that, and learn to mix in a little not-X.

2. I disagree with people who think authenticity is a meaningless concept. To me, it has a clear and concrete meaning; when you feel a fire burning in your chest, when you’re driven by your “heart’s desire” in that way, that’s your Authentic Self (TM). There is practically zero ambiguity about whether you are “heartfelt” or not, at any given moment. And I do generally believe in Following One’s Heart, all else being equal.