Paralyzed By Choice

I’m sure just about everyone has gone through the following conversation:

“What do you want to eat tonight?”

“I dunno, what are you in the mood for?”

“I don’t know. I could go for anything.”

“I don’t care you pick.”

“I don’t feel like making anything, , let’s go out.”

“Okay. Where are we going?”

Eventually, you wind up at a McDonalds because it’s the only thing open after you decided to go out for dinner three hours earlier.

Some would call this indecisiveness, but the technical term for this phenomenon is analysis paralysis, which happens to rhyme. I usually call it “paralyzed by choice”, which doesn’t. I’d make my version of the term rhyme too, but I wound up having so many options to choose from (I actually started this article in February).

Officially, the term analysis paralysis means spending so much time analyzing something that you fail to make a decision. It’s actually something I do quite often, but my version of the term refers to having so many options you waste time trying to decide which one to take. Eventually you do make a decision, but usually because you’re out of time, or the line behind you at Starbucks is getting restless.

At the moment, I’m facing a career change. I retired after 21 years (and 139 days) in the Air Force and now have to find another job. The problem is that in the Air Force, you may have an official job title, but you spend an awful lot of time doing many (many) other jobs. Officially, I was a Cyber Transport Technician. Don’t bother looking it up, it’s basically an IT installer and maintainer. Unfortunately, while I do have experience in that, I’ve spent the last few years as a manager. Again, in the Air Force you wear many hats, so I’ve been a Project Manager, a Human Resources Manager, and an Operations Manager; frequently all at the same time.

This presents a bit of a problem looking for a civilian job. I’m basically qualified and experienced in four different career fields. I know, the easy solution is “do what you love”. Well, what I love is writing… and it doesn’t pay crap. Maybe in the future I’ll have that luxury, but right now I have a family to support.

I decided to go for Human Resource Management. I’m interested in helping and guiding people, so it seemed like a good fit. I went to the job boards and found a handful of HR jobs, and a few I meet all the qualifications for. While researching HR jobs though, I found some IT manager jobs and Operations manager jobs I’m qualified for as well. And hey, there’s a Communications Manager job I might be interested in as well. Having so many options must be a good thing, right? Not exactly.

Anyone who has looked for a job recently knows that there is not such thing as “your resume”. Oh, sure, you have a resume, but in today’s job searching world, it has to be customized and tailored for each and every job you apply for. Automated software scans for keywords, and everything has to match up to the job descriptions. Additionally, many job application sites require you to basically re-write your resume in a narrative form, plus fill out pages and pages of other information.

This takes time. Hours and hours of time. And having to manage 4-5 different master resumes takes even more time. I am paralyzed by choice. There are so many options to choose from, I feel compelled to choose them all, and I am suffering. I want to be selective, but the reality is that it takes weeks to hear back from a potential job, if you even hear back at all. I’ve seen statistics saying for every hundred resumes you send out, you’ll only hear back from 3-5 of them. I haven’t sent out a hundred yet, but so far, those statistics don’t seem that far off. So, I’m taking the shotgun approach, and frankly, job hunting is a full time job in itself.

Paralysis by choice isn’t limited to job hunting. Like I mentioned earlier, I like to write. I also have about a hundred different ideas I’d like to write about. All these choices make it hard to decide which one I want pursue. I like screenwriting and have about five ideas that are either in progress or I’ve started outlining. Unfortunately selling a screenplay is two hundred times harder than finding a job (probably worse). I have several ideas for novels. Getting a novel published is pretty easy nowadays (making money off it, not so much), but novels take a lot of time to write. So which one do I want to commit to? They’re all good. Or maybe they’re not, but I’ll have wasted a lot of time trying to figure that out. I used to have to wonder what I was going to write about. Now, I have way too many choices.

The good news is that I’ve made efforts to help avert paralysis by choice. When I go to a restaurant, I usually have a policy that I’ll order the first thing that catches my eye. When I dated, I committed to one person at a time and put blinders on until it was time to move on. With my kids, I chose a favorite and let the other ones fend for themselves.

America is a wonderful country. The fact that we have to choose where we want to go eat or what place we want to vacation is a testament to how good we have it. But all things come with a price, and ours is time wasted trying to decide which choice we want to make. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to decide on something to watch from my Netflix queue.

                                                                 

Thy Plate Overfloweth

I love food. When I go to a restaurant I suffer from “the paradox of choice” (go ahead, Google it) because I usually want half the items on the menu (Why do I take my Girlfriend out to eat? I want to sample her food). This is why buffets are a godsend to me. Idon’t have to choose. I can have it all. I load up with a little bit of everything and return to my seat with a plate overflowing with calorie-laden goodness. Unfortunately, despite being full,I’m rarely as satisfied as I would be if I ate a tasty single-item meal. Why aren’t I satisfied? I ate everything I wanted, but Ididn’t take the time to enjoy each item before beginning the next.

I’ve been slacking horribly on both my blog writing and pre-professional writing (sounds better than “amateur”). I guess not so much slacking. Slacking would be me having free time and choosing to do nothing instead of writing. I’ve just been busy because I’d over-filled my plate.

Just like the way I approach buffets, I tend to fill my life up with a lot of activity. I have many interests and I juggle multiple things simultaneously. Instead of enjoying the peace and relief when one project is finished, I seek out one, or two, more things to fill that space. While this keeps me busy, it also expends very finite financial, physical, and mental resources, leaving little room for the unexpected and creates stress.

I recently resumed college classes. I was considering retiring from the Air Force and took a Transition Assistance class, whichwas supposed to prepare me for life after the military. The primary thing I got out of it was that I wasn’t as ready as I thought I was, so one of my first priorities was being better prepared, and finishing my Communications degree was high on that list. 

Eagar to get started, I signed up for two online classes at the University of Maryland University College (“The FightingRedundants”!!) not thinking about the time I needed to dedicate to them. Anyone who has taken an on-line course knows they are fast paced due to most being on a compressed schedule. I was deployed the last time I took online courses. I figured it was easy then, so I could do it now. Thing is, when you’re deployed, there are very little distractions. No family, your food is provided, and entertainment is at a minimum.

This time I was not deployed, learning a new job, family, plus a pretty full social life. I found myself using a lot of my remaining free time (that I used to devote to personal writing) to all my assignments, most of which involved a lot of writing. The real endurance test was last week when both courses had their final projects due, and I had to do an investigative report for work. Yes, I was writing, which is something I truly enjoy doing (even when it’s work), but it’s not as satisfying in random bits instead of a single project.

Doing these courses was like having a second job, and my mistake was trying to keep doing everything else I wanted to. Sure, it all worked out in the end. I finished my two classes and managed to do everything else I wanted, but the quality of it all suffered.  Just because there is room on the plate, it doesn’t have to be filled with more food.

I’m trying to not fill my plate so full anymore. I’m taking two classes again this semester, but I’m not doing them at the same time (one of the benefits of online classes is there are usually multiple class sessions per semester). I’m trimming my social calendar and getting the kids more involved. I’m also working on organizational skills so I can make better use of my time.

I’m also learning I need to keep some empty spaces on the plate. One of the best things my Girlfriend is teaching me (inadvertently at times…) is that it’s okay to just do nothing. I’m one of those that sits down and immediately thinks of all the productive things I could/should be doing instead of sitting down. I used to hate naps because of the time they wasted. Now I nap, and I love it. The other day I was just lying on my bed staring at the ceiling, blissfully doing nothing.

There are many things you could draw from this post: Life moves pretty fast. Stop and smell the roses. Buffets are awesome. I prefer to empathize that life should be quality over quantity. You can get a whole lot of little things accomplished, or a few big things. More often than not, it’s the big accomplishments that are far more satisfying.