Half-decisions might seem harmless, but they’re some of the biggest drains on a business. Gwen Bortner and Tonya Kubo unpack how lingering in “maybe” costs more in time, energy, and opportunity than making the wrong choice ever could. Through personal stories and real-world examples, they explore what drives hesitation, how to recognize when you’re stuck in one, and the mindset shift that helps leaders act decisively. This candid conversation will leave you rethinking the true cost of delay — and ready to choose clarity over comfort.
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The Danger Of Half-Decisions: Why Hesitation Costs More Than Mistakes
The Cost Of Hesitation: Why Indecision Is More Damaging Than Mistakes
What if I were to tell you that hesitation, that pause, rumination, meandering, delay of making a decision, is costing you more than your mistakes ever could? In fact, half decisions, those times when you say, “Maybe,” or, “Let’s wait,” or, “No, let’s just keep our options open,” are one of the biggest drains in businesses.
In this episode, Gwen and I are going to talk about why those half-decisions can be so damaging, how to recognize when you’re stuck in one and what it looks like to step into confident decision-making as the CEO of your business. Now, Gwen, you have a saying that I happen to really like about delaying decisions that I want you to kick us off with and tell us what it means to you.
It’s actually my mom’s saying, a very wise woman, which is not making a decision is, in and of itself, a decision. This was shared with me many years ago when I was in my late twenties, as I was trying to decide whether or not I was going to stay married to my husband at the time. I just kept in and out. I couldn’t decide, and wasn’t getting there. She said, “You need to understand that not making a decision is also a decision.”
Not making a decision is also a decision. Share on XThat was the moment. It was like, “Yeah, I’m getting divorced.” It was one of those things that really brought the clarity that by not making the decision, that was, in fact, deciding not to decide. That was really saying I’m staying in whatever space and place and time and situation that I’m currently in is when I’m planning to stay in.
What I love about that example, because that example I think gets to the heart of the issue more than any other, right because a half decision, or in your case, when you’re like not willing to decide, stay or go, like the old Clash song, then you are choosing to live in permanent uncertainty, which stalls your growth because once the decision is made, “I am staying,” then you know what your plans are for Christmas.
You know what your address is, you know how the bills are split up or whatever it is. Once you decide, ‘I’m going,” then you know potentially, I have to find a new address. I am suddenly very available this Christmas and the bills are going to look a lot different. You know that. As long as, “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,” it’s like everything gets put off because most things end up having to be on the other side of the decision, and that costs.
The Hidden Cost: How Indecision Drains Your Energy And Time
What it costs, it was several episodes back that we talked about it, but this is that energy cost that we don’t give enough credit to because we regenerate energy every day, hopefully, if our bodies are working correctly and we’re sleeping like we should and doing all of the things, so we lose track of how much energy things are taking for us. Yet we do have a limited amount of energy on any given day. It may or may not fully replenish the next day, like I said, depending on a whole lot of other factors.
That indecision is, in fact, taking energy and we often do not give it nearly enough credit for how much energy it’s actually taking and how much cognitive load is associated with continuing to process. Yes, no back and forth. Even if we’re not spending conscious cognitive load on it, we’re still spending a whole lot of unconscious cognitive load on it. That means that that’s taking away our ability to make some of the other decisions that maybe we could make quicker, easier, faster if we are fully focused on them.
Is there anything else that people should know is at risk with half-decisions before we move into the root cause of half-decisions?
I think the biggest thing at risk is, energy is one, but time is the other. It’s time lost to finding out what the outcome of that decision is. I could have sat in this indecisive place, we’ll go back to my divorce, for months, potentially years, and that would have prevented me from doing all sorts of other things because I didn’t know what that outcome was going to be. Once I know the outcome, even if it turns out that it wasn’t the best decision, in this case it was, but even if it turned out it wasn’t the best decision, you don’t know that until you make the decision.
Anything else that was going on in that timeframe that couldn’t be dealt with because that decision hadn’t been made, because most of our life really is about a whole series of decisions. One decision creates situations and circumstances that allow for next decisions. The sooner that we make those decisions, the quicker we can find out what that outcome is.
Most of our life is a series of decisions, each creating circumstances that lead to the next. The sooner we make these decisions, the quicker we discover the outcome. Share on XI know we talk about more than what’s on the show of Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. Part of it is saying, what is the decision? What is the result? She says we have to separate the two, but you can’t know the result until you make the decision. If it’s a wrong decision, the sooner you make it, the quicker you can unmake it.
It’s like the sooner you have your data. It costs time, it costs energy and not always, but it can oftentimes cost money.
It can cost a huge amount of money. I think we’ve given a lot of examples on the show in previous times where someone held off on making a decision and once they made it, it was like, ‘If I would’ve done that 3 months, 6 months, 1 year ago,” like in the case of letting someone go, it’s like, “I would’ve had that entire salary still in the business,” because what they found out in this one particular case was they didn’t even need to replace them.
Unpacking The “Why”: What Drives Business Owners To Waffle On Decisions?
Also, on the opposite end, like making a large purchase. Depending on what the purchase is, sometimes, if you make that decision sooner, yes, you’ve got the bill sooner, but also, the item can be in production sooner, which could then be leading to higher sales or whatever it could be. If indecision is so costly, if we have so many examples of the high cost of indecision, what is it that you think drives business owners from either making those half-decisions where they decide but they don’t implement or just waffling?
I think in the majority of cases, it is the concern of making what we’re going to call “the wrong decision.” It’s a fear of being wrong. Most decisions, not absolutely everyone, but a huge percentage of decisions can be unmade or remade as the case may be at another moment in time. We’ll go back to my divorce. As I said, it was the right decision. If I had gotten divorced and realized, “This was completely wrong. We’re still spending all the time together. We still love each other,” we could get remarried. We could totally unmake that decision. That’s a pretty big decision as decisions go.
A huge percentage of decisions can be unmade or remade. Share on XI think we get caught in our worry and our tendency for perfectionism. We want to know what the outcome is before we actually make the outcome so that we know that we’re making the right decision, because this is never the problem with the decisions that are just so obvious to us. This is only a problem on the decisions that it’s like, “If we do this, this could happen. If we do that, that could happen.” We’re going back and forth between the possibilities.
In a lot of cases, I think the other places where both possibilities feel relatively equal in value and/or risk. I think that’s the other place where it gets stuck, where it’s not obvious in any way. I think the third possible reason is also when it’s just a hard thing to do, particularly decisions around people are hard things to do because most folks like people. Unless they’ve been just horrendous, it’s not actually an easy decision to say, “I’m going to let someone go,” for whatever the reasons. I know that I need to do it, but I’m afraid to say the hard things because I know their feelings are going to get hurt. I know it’s going to be hard on them financially. It’s going to be all of these things that it’s important that you care about, but is also not your actual responsibility.
Fear Of Consequences: The Uncomfortable Truth About Hard Decisions
I heard, I think 3, but potentially 4 reasons. The first is the fear of being wrong. I think that’s a big driver. The second, which was the last one you said, but I think it’s an important one to point out, is a fear of consequences.
I wouldn’t have said it that way, but that’s a better way to say it. That’s a great, concise way to say it. It’s the fear of the consequences. It’s a fear of the other half of it that is just going to have to go with that decision.
The reason I’m thinking of that because we’ve talked a lot about how difficult it is to make hard decisions at the risk of being redundant. It’s like what makes the decision hard is that you have to live with the consequences. In many of these scenarios we’re talking about, whether it’s divorce or letting go of a person, it comes out to, you don’t get to be the good guy. That’s the fear of the consequence. The consequence is that people may think less of me and I don’t want people to think less of me. It’s just easier to suck up the pain and hope, because I think in the back of their head, they hope they’ll do me the favor of making the cut. I know because I’ve been married before.
Maybe they’ll get better or something will change.
When I was married before, the thing that I would say is it is so much easier to be left than it is to leave. Maybe if I stick it out, maybe they’ll leave me. By the way, both suck. Doesn’t matter what it is. That was not the reason to put it off at all. In my head, I had painted out the consequences of being left would’ve been so much easier than to make the decision and move forward.
The third thing you spoke of, though, I would call it perfectionism. Here’s why I call it perfectionism, because I don’t think everybody sees it as perfectionism, and we’ve talked about this on other episodes as well. It’s like somebody somewhere sold a lot of us a bill of goods that we are entitled to or could potentially have 100% of the information we need to make a decision at any given point in time. It’s this perfectionism, they’re waiting for more information. I don’t have enough information yet to make a decision and we never have as much information as we want. We will never have all of the information.
One of the big premises of Thinking in Bets that’s actually really super useful is, and you said, “I think someone sold us a bill of goods.” We’ve been taught that life is like chess. Annie’s premise in her book as a former professional poker player is no, it’s more like poker, where we can have a certain amount of the information and we can make a percentage-based bet on what is the best outcome but it doesn’t mean that it’s always going to be correct because there are pieces of the equation. There’s information we don’t know.
At a chessboard, it’s hard to process, but we can figure out every possible move that can be made at any given move because we know exactly how all of the pieces move and we know where all of the pieces are. All of my pieces. All of your pieces. However, that is not the way life is. It’s way more like poker. There are a whole lot of cards that aren’t showing. We’ve got some amount of the information and we need to make choices based on that. Rarely do we have the perfect hand.
If we have a spade royal flush, that is the highest hand. If you’ve got that, yes, you are going to go all in, you are going to win. No one can do better than that. However, if you have any other royal flush, someone could actually have a spade royal flush. Unless you’ve got enough other cards to say, “No one else can have a royal flush either.”
We usually don’t have that much information. We usually have a reasonable amount of information. I think the key is that we think that we need more information and or that getting more information will actually help us make our decision. Sometimes, that’s a cost of time. Yes, you can get more information, but it’s going to take six months and during that time, what have you sacrificed to get that additional piece of information?
Indecision Vs. Mistakes: Which Hurts Your Business More?
When we kicked off the episode, I made a bold statement that indecision is actually more hurtful than making the wrong decision or making a mistake. True or not true? Why or why not?
I think true most of the time, and I’ll say where my exception is when you’re pretty sure you’re making the wrong choice. When you really think you’re making the right choice based on the information that you have, not making the decision, there is a time cost. Once you’ve made that decision, then you can move forward with whatever else.
As you said, whether or not you’re going to have to do Christmas with your husband’s family or not have to do Christmas with your husband’s family based on some of those things. There’s some time cost that goes in there. The piece that I think most people don’t understand is that just because you made a decision doesn’t mean you have to stick with it forever.
In most cases, there are some things that you cannot undo, but you can say, I’ll just use something that we’ve gone around about at different times, is we’re going to email every week. We’re going to send an email every week. Should we, should we not? Is that too much? We can unmake that decision and say, “We’re going to email once a month.”
The faster you make a decision, the faster you move beyond it, know if it was right or wrong, and determine your next steps. Share on XAt some point, we can unmake that decision and say, “We’re going to email every two weeks.” Sure, this isn’t a high-risk kind of thing. For some folks, that’s something that they will go round and round like, “What is really the right decision here?” It’s like, try one and see what happens. Get more data. If that turns out that that doesn’t feel like it was a good choice, make another choice. Get more data, see what’s going on.
Not making a choice means that usually, in most cases, nothing is happening. Sending out an email once a month is probably better than not sending out any emails, which may actually be better than sending them out once a week, but make a choice. It may not be as good, could be, but the thing is not doing anything usually is a really bad choice, unless there is a high probability that there is more highly useful information coming in a relatively short period of time.
I would sum up what you just said. It’s like the faster you make the decision, the faster you move beyond the decision. The faster you know if it was the right or the wrong decision, the faster that you can then determine your next steps. I think that the other way that it hurts us more than mistakes is when I don’t know. When I’m like, “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.” I was deciding whether to change bookkeepers. Now once I changed my bookkeeper, I knew exactly what the level of service was and all of the things that the bookkeeper offered. However, there was a point in time when I was like, “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,” because another decision was maybe I need to change banks. I can’t really change banks until I change bookkeepers.
If I’m going to change the bank, I should change the bank first, then I’ll change the bookkeeper. Now, I had two decisions that were in play because I wasn’t willing to make one. Once I made a decision, then it was very simple, which I decided to change bookkeepers. It’s very simple. I asked the bookkeeper, “Do you think I need to change banks or is that a decision I can make a different day?” They were just like, “It depends. Why do you want to change banks?” I got to delegate that other decision to them, which made me feel much more confident in the decision-making. That’s also an example of the bottlenecks that can come from indecision. All that stuff gets stuck because it all hinges on one decision.
The Domino Effect: How Your Indecision Impacts Your Team And Beyond
I think the piece that we lose track of really fast is how much we are holding up other aspects of our business, our life, other people’s lives by not making the decision.
To that point, holding up other people’s lives, I think that’s something else we don’t realize. We think the decisions are all about us because I think a lot of times when we’re stuck in indecision, we’re not trying to be selfish but it’s hard for us to see outside of our own worldview. We end up being very insular in our thinking. One of the things we don’t realize is that when we’re indecisive, it does affect those around us.
Back to the example of do we need to let somebody go or do we need to hire somebody, that indecision affects everybody on the team because presumably, if you want to let somebody go, usually it is because they are not performing up to standard. Sometimes it has to do with financial sustainability. We can’t afford that person, but usually, it has to do with performance. That means everybody else is watching this person underperform, or everybody else is assuming some of the responsibilities of that person while you continue to pay them to do the job that they’re not doing very well and everybody around you sees that.
That’s a huge example of it. The other place that’s the opposite side of it is when I, as the decision maker, want to leave my options open because I like lots of choices. The thing is that while I’m leaving my options open, you, if you have any piece of implementing anything that’s related to this decision, can’t move forward. It’s a different version where all of a sudden, your timeline becomes way more compressed because I wanted to leave my options open until I got a feel for it or whatever it happens to be.
There are certain personalities that absolutely positively like to have options. They want to have options open. One of the challenges with that is that certain people can’t get started with any aspect of it without them actually knowing what the final goal is, even though the first 3 or 4 steps, it is irrelevant to what the final goal is. They’re opposite personality types. You’ve got these two opposite personality types in an environment.
If the one who’s the decision makers, the one who wants to leave their options open, they get really frustrated that the other one is not actually taking action yet because what they’re seeing is they’re not doing anything and the person who’s not taking action, it’s like, “Until I understand what the entire piece looks like, I can’t make a choice. I can’t get started.”
They fight. They don’t fight, fight, but they fight each other in productivity is what ultimately ends up happening because one is saying, “I don’t actually have to decide about blue or green until the end.” The other person is like, “I can’t go until I know if it’s blue or green.” They’re like, “The first three steps don’t have anything to do with color.”
It’s like, “I can’t go until I know if it’s blue or green.” That’s another place where we lose productivity, often in the not making the decision. Another one that’s related to what we’ve talked about is that we lose so much time in the spiral of the decision. What else could we be doing instead of thinking about this decision, and/or the anxiety that that is creating by not making the decision?
We lose so much time in the spiral of the decision. Share on XPart of your example speaks to the fact that, especially if you have a team, but other people don’t know how to prioritize in the absence of the decision. Let’s use the example of this show. Early on, right before we launched, one thought was that I would be doing all the production. I was going to outline episodes. I was going to do the show with you. After the fact, I was going to be doing the editing.
We had mapped out a fairly simple show because the idea was it had to be pretty simple for me to figure out how to edit it and do all the other things. When we started looking into all but then it was like, “What editing software do we need? What platforms are we going to make?” There were all these decisions that had to be based on how confident we were in my skill level in editing the show. We then said, “There’s a lot of decisions and these decisions actually add up over time, buying this software and that software and doing all this stuff. What would it look like if we just outsourced it?”
It was very simple. It’s just find the service provider that did the scope of service we wanted for the price we were willing to pay. It then became very easy. I didn’t have to prioritize the simplicity of the editing to match my editing skillset. I just needed to prioritize what our audience needed and deserved most in creating the content for each episode. Everything else got a lot easier because it wasn’t my problem anymore.
One of those other decisions early on was, are we doing it audio or are we doing it also video? That was also part of the driver. Early on, both were on the table, but as you were thinking about doing it, it was audio only. It was not going to have any video element.
Not if I was editing it.
That was also part of it. As soon as I said, “No, I think we want to have a video element to it,” it was like, that changes this other decision really quickly.
From Waffling To Winning: Practical Steps To Confident Decision-Making
That made the decision for us because nobody wants to see a video I have edited. Let’s start to give some how. We agitated the pain point, which us marketing people, we love to agitate some pain. It’s so much fun. We’ve talked about why people struggle to just commit and make a decision. We have talked about why indecision hurts more than making the wrong decision. We’ve talked about how it impacts those around you. Now, how do you shift, how do you make the decision when you realize you have been waffling in a decision?
The first thing is you’ve got to be able to identify that you’re waffling. If you can’t identify, you need to have someone else who can help you identify that you’re waffling. A lot of times, we don’t realize that we’re waffling. It was just like my mom saying, “You need to realize that not making a decision is also a decision.” I hadn’t realized I was waffling till she said that and was like, “I need to just decide.”
I have a friend who will say, “This is the third time you have expressed this challenge to me and you need to decide are you going to solve it or are you going to stop talking to me about it? I’m a fixer. I want to solve problems, I’m happy to help you solve it. If you’re just talking to me about it because you just want to talk about it, you have other friends to do that with.”
Truly, identification that you’re waffling is the most important thing. I think truly asking yourself the question, “What is holding me back from deciding,” so that you can get clear on it? Is it because you really feel like you don’t have enough information? If that’s the case, then what do you have to do to actually get the additional information? If it’s because, “I’m afraid of the consequences,” you have to decide are the consequences ever going to change?
That’s the piece that I think most people don’t pay attention to with the consequences one. They say, “I don’t really want to deal with the consequences,” but if they’re never going to change, either you might as well do it now or you might as well decide you’re never going to do it, because most of the time, the consequences, whatever they are, really aren’t going to change.
If it’s fear of making a wrong decision, the exercise that I’ve had someone do with me a couple of times is to really say how bad is the bad version of that decision as compared to how good is what you think the good decision is. What you often will realize as you come in is they’re actually not that far apart. The bad version and the best version really aren’t that far apart. It’s like choose one, see which side you land on and if you need to make a new decision at another point with more data, then go forward.
I think the key thing is to give yourself a deadline to say, “I’ve just realized I’ve been waffling on it. This is the decision I have to make before the end of the day, before the end of the week, before the end of the month,” whatever it is. Looking at where all of those other consequences are. I’ve talked about this before, which I call short-term pain or long-term pain. To me, that’s the consequences when if you’re not doing something because of consequences, you’re probably just doing long-term pain because there are other things that are going on and at some point, you’re still going to have to proverbially rip off the Band-Aid.
If you’re healed enough to rip off the Band-Aid now, is there a reason that you leave the Band-Aid on for five more days before you rip it off it? I’m not sure it’s better. I think that is the piece, to first be aware and then figure out what’s preventing you and then take action based on what’s preventing you, giving yourself your own deadlines and timeframes. Maybe you’re at a place where you might need someone to hold you accountable to make the decision. I’ve had you do that for me, you’ve had me do it for you.
Trust Your Gut: The Power Of Intuition In Business Decisions
I think that’s great. It’s like you have to recognize it and if you know you are somebody who just doesn’t see that, you need to proactively give people permission around you. Not everybody, be choosy, but give them permission to let you know when they witness that you need to figure out what it is that is the bottleneck for you. You got to give yourself a deadline, for sure.
Just trust your gut. We have more instinct about what is right and wrong, and what we need to do, than we often give ourselves credit for. Share on XI would say, finally, though, it’s like trust your intuition. I think that’s the other thing. We start a business. Most of us do not start businesses because we suck. That’s just not it. It’s like, “I’m really bad at that. I should go make that my business.” No. Our friend Rachel Allen always says, “Entrepreneurship is hard. Do you have to really be into it if this is your chosen path?” If this is your chosen path, if this is what you’ve decided to do, then trust your gut to know the right next step. If you’re like genuinely in uncharted waters here, never been here before, have no idea what to do, then go seek help. That’s your intuition as well. I think the big one is just trust your gut.
We have way more instinct about what is right and wrong and what we need to do and not do than we often give ourself credit for. This could be like a whole other topic so we won’t go deep into it, but we so often have been conflating intuition and emotion. Emotion is rarely valuable in decision-making, but intuition is highly valuable in decision-making. As you start paying attention to is that intuition or is that emotion, you’ll start seeing that you can make your decisions faster because, like I said, your intuition is incredibly accurate.
Gwen, thank you for walking through this. I feel like this was a really good episode and I think if you are still reading, ultimately, recognize that indecision is a tax on your business. The sooner you commit, whether it’s a yes or a no, the sooner you and your business regains clarity and you get your momentum back. Nothing destroys your momentum or inhibits momentum faster or worse than indecision.
If you find yourself caught in that cycle of half decisions or you are just sick and tired of trying to decide something, we need to talk. Get yourself booked on a clarity call with Gwen. They are designed specifically to help you see all the potential decisions very clearly and to figure out which one makes the most sense for right now. You’re going to go ahead and go over to EverydayEffectiveness.com/clarity. That’ll get you right onto Gwen’s calendar. You don’t have to keep going weeks wondering whether you should or shouldn’t or could or couldn’t. You’ll just get the decision done.
Mentioned in This Episode
About Your Hosts
Gwen Bortner has spent four decades advising executives and entrepreneurs in 45+ industries. She helps women succeed in business without sacrificing happiness by identifying their true desires and aligning their business functions. She spots overlooked bottlenecks and crafts efficient plans toward sustainable success that center your values and priorities. Known for her unique approach to problem-solving and accountability through the G.E.A.R.S. framework, Gwen empowers clients to achieve their definition of success without sacrificing what matters most.
Tonya Kubo is a marketing strategist and community builder who helps entrepreneurs build thriving online communities. As co-host of The Business You Really Want and Chief Marketing and Operations Officer (CMOO) at Everyday Effectiveness, she keeps conversations on track and ensures complex business concepts are accessible to everyone. A master facilitator with 18+ years of experience in online community building, Tonya takes a people-first approach to marketing and centers the human experience in all she does.
