10/19/2002 Entry: "Blue. No, yel--Auuuuuuuugh!"

I envy people who can make decisions easily. My decisions are made at the last minute, and while they appear to have been completely arbitrary, the decision-making process leading up it has generally been long and convoluted. Sometimes this includes visual aids, as you see on the right. That is how I made decisions today about holiday vacations. I eventually gave up trying to plan with an actual paper calendar and highlighter pens, because after ten tries I still couldn't get it quite right and figured I was just wasting time and paper. (Of course I also couldn't I decide on the days off I wanted, which didn't help.) However, it should be noted that when I started working digitally, everything became clear. I'm not sure if I had just worked it all out already, or if, somehow, the change in medium was enough to organize my thinking. Oh, yeah, right; as if all of my problems could be solved through careful application of Lempel-Zev-Welch Compression. Well, actually...it might be worth a shot. This is all probably indicative of something, but I'm sure it's nothing I didn't already know.

Replies: One Comment

Maybe you do need an algorithm. I have the same problem. And I don't say that lightly. It is a huge problem. There are some decisions where it's hard to find a significant point to latch onto as being more important than the others. Sometimes it feels like 40% of my brain is working on the decision in the background, spinning and spinning and getting nowhere.

Posted by biologic show @ 10/22/2002 08:46 AM PST