Simple. Isn’t it?

This is my first post. I am sitting at my writing table wondering what to write about. Everything I’ve read about writing, says to just start writing, so well, I guess I’m at the right place.

This is a process, and this is where I begin. Everyone starts somewhere. This website is not yet complete. So far, I have drafted an about page and chosen a theme. I was stuck on choosing a logo. I have difficulty with decisions that don’t have a clear right answer. I feel like the attractiveness or otherwise of a logo is very much a matter of personal taste. I guess it could look more modern or more corporate, more friendly or more artsy. The trouble is, I don’t know what I want to go for yet. None strikes me as being inherently better.

Although I will be talking about and hopefully opening dialogue about ethics and business matters in this blog, I want to escape the stuffy corporate speak that has been the bigger part of my life and use a more “human” style of communication. I guess this means that I probably don’t want an overly corporate-looking logo.

An old friend of mine once told me, if you are having a difficult time making a decision, both decisions are good. So, it doesn’t matter which I go for. I just need to pick one. Simple. Isn’t it?

Well, it’s good advice but difficult to follow when the options are unlimited. A logo can literally be anything! In fact, it isn’t even necessarily necessary.

Also in my head is William James’ famous and grossly unhelpful adage that not making a decision is a decision to not make a decision. With this, I don’t agree. One and only one is an act. Doing an act requires conscious thought. Not doing an act doesn’t require thought.

Imagine if every time we started any activity, we had to constantly make a decision to continue it? Say, one day you decide to go for a run. You put your running shorts on. You put one leg in. Do I want to put the other leg in? You start putting your running shirt on. Stop! wait! I need to decide whether to continue putting my shirt on. Do I want to put socks on? Do I want to put my shoes on? Why my shoes? Maybe not the running shoes, maybe I should try run barefoot! And that’s before you’ve even started to walk out the door. We would be useless! Our entire brain space would be taken up making constant decisions that don’t need to be made. We’d all be insane!

If we take the view that making a decision is an act, we can decide to go for run and then be in autopilot until we’re out the door. Our mind would be free to roam while running, which is the main reason why most people I know run. The next decision would be to stop running, which will either be when we run the distance that we decided to run, or when our body signals us that it wants to stop, through pain, fatigue, discomfort or some compelling reason. In this second scenario, we made it much much further and had a much much better time. We all know that getting started is the hardest part and that’s because we have to make a decision.

There may be times when we decide not to act, and I will agree that that is a decision.

There may be times when put off making a decision because of fear, uncertainly, insufficient information, or for some other reason. In those cases, it might be useful to think in terms of a non-decision being a decision and one of the popular decision-making processes, such as Chip and Dan Heath’s WRAP technique can be useful. I personally use it in major life decisions, but for my new logo, it is overkill.

I remind myself of the fact that I can change it at any time. That doesn’t help either. That means more decisions, more non-decisions and more decisions to delay the decision. Maybe for now it can be a blob of colour. A circle, or a splatter, or a square, or some stripes, or anything. Oh dear!

At least I made one decision in what I believe to be the right direction. I made the decision to sit down today and write and I’m happy that I didn’t have to question that decision at every word.

What do you think? How do you deal with small decisions? What books or theories do you find useful?