Defeat analysis paralysis

Are you an “analyzer?” Do you like to know all the details about a situation before committing to an action? Do you sometimes find yourself stuck in a cycle of evaluating and re-evaluating options?

Whether you are or not, you almost certainly work with people like this. One of my internal saboteurs is the Stickler, and he likes to tell me to “do it perfectly or not at all.”

This is a recipe for disaster or—at the very least—for stagnation.

There’s a straightforward way out of this analysis paralysis, though, and you’re going to laugh at how simple it is. Are you ready for it? Here it is:

Act.

Easy, right? It may sound easy, but if it were easy people wouldn’t write thousands and thousands of blog posts about “analysis paralysis.” So what makes this so hard to do?

While everyone is different, and each individual’s motivations are a result of their unique lived experiences, most reluctance to act in the face of analysis paralysis is driven by the desire to not make mistakes, or to be correct, or to be perfect.

This is the challenge that I often face, which prevents me from “just posting that article already,” or “just reaching out to that potential coaching client” when a big part of my brain is telling me “if you mess this up, it will all be for nothing.”

The not-so-secret recipe for action

My own coach likes to tell me “any action is better than no action.” That’s a pretty good maxim to live by on its own, but I want to add another layer to address the specific anxiety of analysis paralysis:

You have permission to do a bad job.

Not only do you have permission to do a bad job, I will personally give you a high-five for doing a bad job, for two very important reasons:

1. You did something; you prevailed in the face of your inner saboteurs!

2. You unlocked an irreplaceable learning opportunity!

Remember, there is no such thing as a failed experiment. An experiment that produces an undesirable outcome is a learning success, and learning is what an experiment is for.

So the next time you find yourself hemming and hawing over which direction to take, do yourself a favor: frame the action as an experiment, and just do it.

As always, I’d love to hear your stories of acting in the face of your anxieties of failure, and how you manage analysis paralysis in yourself or on your team.

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