How to make decisions when you can't think straight

You make decisions when you cannot think straight by sorting them, not by thinking harder. Split every open choice into reversible and irreversible: decide the reversible ones fast and roughly, defer the irreversible ones on purpose to a named date, and use a fixed rule instead of a fresh judgement wherever a rule will do. A decent decision made today beats a perfect one made in three weeks, because most of what feels like being careful is just delay wearing a better coat.

There is no shame in the state you are in. You are being asked to settle more things in six months than you settled in the previous six years, on the worst sleep you have had since the kids were small. Your thinking has not failed. Judgement is a limited supply, and you are spending it evenly on everything, which is why there is none left for the things that matter.

Make the decision smaller than it looks

Most of what feels undecidable is not one decision. It is five stacked on top of each other, and the stack is what stops you. "Where am I going to live" is not a choice you can make. It contains money, school runs, how long the settlement takes and whether you can stand that suburb another year.

So cut it down until you find the piece that is actually in front of you this week. Not where I live, but whether I renew this lease for six months. Not what happens with the kids, but what happens the fortnight after next. A decision you can hold in one hand is one you can make on a bad night.

Sort by whether you can undo it

This is the sort that does the most work. Two piles: things you can walk back, and things you cannot.

Which sofa, which suburb to rent in, which bank, what you tell your boss. All reversible. Awkward to change, but changeable. Then the other pile: selling the house, signing the settlement, the school move, anything with a solicitor's signature on it. Those are one-way doors.

Men in the middle of a separation treat both piles the same, agonising over a rental lease with the weight of a property settlement. That is where the supply goes.

Decide the reversible ones fast and roughly

If you can undo it, decide it now and decide it badly. Give it five minutes, pick the option that is obviously not terrible, and move.

You will get some of them wrong. That is the point. Getting a reversible decision wrong costs you the bother of changing it later. Leaving it open costs you weeks of it sitting in your head, taking a cut of everything else you try to think about. Being wrong quickly is cheaper than being right slowly.

Defer the irreversible ones on purpose

Deferring is not avoiding, as long as you do it deliberately and write down the date. An undecided thing with no date attached comes back every night. An undecided thing with "the Monday after the valuation" written next to it goes quiet.

Say it plainly: I am not deciding the house until March, and here is what has to be true before I do. Then when it surfaces at two in the morning, you have an answer ready that is not "I should be sorting this out." For parking those somewhere that is not your head, Clear is built for exactly that.

Use a rule instead of a judgement

Every choice you convert into a rule is one you never have to make again. I stopped deciding, case by case, whether to reply to a difficult message the day it arrived. The rule became: nothing contested gets answered same day. That one rule took a whole category of small awful decisions off my plate.

Pick rules for the things that recur. No large decision after nine at night. Handovers happen at the same place every time. Anything with a legal consequence waits for advice, no exceptions. A rule made once in a calm hour beats a judgement made over and over in bad ones.

A decent decision today beats a perfect one in three weeks

Waiting has a price that never shows up on the list. Weeks of an open question cost you sleep, focus and patience with your kids, and at the end you generally choose what you would have chosen on day one.

Aim for good enough, on time, made while you are the version of yourself who is still functioning. That is what the rest of the clarity pieces come back to as well. Not sharper thinking. Fewer things asking to be thought about.

One honest next step

Take the list you are carrying and put one letter beside each item: R if you could undo it, I if you could not. No deciding yet, just the letters. Then pick the three easiest R's and settle them before bed tonight, roughly, in ten minutes. The pile will be shorter in the morning, and what is left is the part that was always the real work.