You know your business. You know what you want to achieve.
So why do some decisions feel so much harder than they should?
Perhaps you’re considering a new service, reviewing your systems, deciding what to delegate or trying to work out which of several competing priorities deserves your attention first.
None of the options is necessarily wrong. In fact, several might be perfectly reasonable.
And sometimes that’s exactly what makes choosing difficult.
I’ve been exploring the work of psychologist and researcher Sheena Iyengar, particularly her research into how people make choices and what happens when we’re presented with too many options.
In an experiment she conducted with colleagues, shoppers were offered either six or 24 varieties of jam to sample.
The larger selection attracted more attention, but shoppers who encountered the smaller selection were more likely to make a purchase.
It’s an interesting illustration of something many business owners will recognise: having more options doesn’t necessarily make it easier to decide.
Of course, choice overload isn’t inevitable. Sometimes having more options is helpful. But when you’re already managing competing demands, the way those choices are presented can create unnecessary Business Friction.
What interested me most about Iyengar’s work wasn’t simply the problem. It was four practical ways to make choosing easier.
And I think they’re worth trying in your own business.
✂️ 1. Cut: What Can You Take Off The Table?
When you’re making a decision, it’s tempting to keep every possible option open.
You might have six different systems you’re considering, four ideas for a new service or a long list of improvements you want to make.
But do all those options genuinely deserve your attention?
Sometimes we keep considering something simply because it’s possible, not because it’s right for us.
📝 Try This:
Think of a decision you’re currently struggling with.
Write down the options you’re considering.
Now ask yourself:
- Which options genuinely support what I’m trying to achieve?
- Which am I keeping because I feel I ought to consider them?
- Are any so similar that I don’t need to explore them separately?
You don’t have to make the final decision yet.
Just see whether you can remove one or two options that aren’t really contenders.
That’s one less thing to carry around in your head.
👁️ 2. Make It Concrete: What Would Each Choice Actually Look Like?
Some decisions are difficult because we’re comparing ideas rather than realities.
Take the decision to introduce a new service.
It might sound exciting. It could bring in additional revenue and attract a different type of client.
But what would delivering it actually involve?
How much time would it take?
What would need to change?
What might you have to stop doing to make room for it?
And perhaps most importantly, would it move your business towards the way you want to work?
📝 Try This:
Choose two options you’re weighing up.
For each one, finish these sentences:
- If I choose this, my working week will look different because…
- The biggest benefit would be…
- The biggest challenge would be…
- To make this work, I would need…
The aim isn’t to predict the future perfectly.
It’s to make the consequences of each choice easier to understand.
An option can look very different once you consider what it would mean in practice.
🗂️ 3. Categorise: Are You Comparing The Right Things?
When everything is on one enormous list, it’s difficult to see what belongs together.
Imagine you’re thinking about improving how your business operates.
Your list might include changing your booking system, updating your website, delegating invoicing, reviewing your pricing, creating a new service and finding a better way to manage client enquiries.
Six things. All potentially worthwhile.
But they’re not six versions of the same decision.
Some relate to your systems. Some concern your services. Others affect your time or finances.
Trying to prioritise them all together can make the whole exercise feel unnecessarily complicated.
📝 Try This:
Take your current list of business decisions or improvements.
Group them into categories that make sense to you.
For example:
- Things that would free up my time
- Things that would improve the client experience
- Things that could increase revenue
- Things that would make the business easier to run
Your categories might be completely different.
That’s fine.
The important thing is that they help you understand what you’re looking at.
Once you’ve grouped the options, you may find that some decisions become clearer, or that several items are actually part of the same underlying problem.
👣 4. Build Up Complexity: What’s The Easiest Decision You Can Make First?
Sometimes a decision feels overwhelming because we’re trying to solve the whole thing at once.
You might know that your business needs better systems, but the thought of reviewing every process, choosing software and changing how you work feels enormous.
So nothing happens.
What if you didn’t have to decide everything today?
What if the first decision was simply which part of the business is causing the most frustration?
And the next was whether that problem really needs new software, or whether there’s a simpler way to address it?
You can build towards the bigger decision rather than trying to tackle it in one go.
📝 Try This:
Think about something you’ve been putting off because it feels too complicated.
Ask yourself:
What’s the smallest useful decision I could make about this today?
Not the smallest task you could complete just to feel productive.
The smallest decision that would give you more clarity about what comes next.
It might be deciding what the real problem is, which information you need or what you’re no longer willing to spend time on.
One useful decision can make the next one easier.
You Don’t Have To Work Through Every Decision Alone
These four approaches are useful exercises, but sometimes the difficult part is recognising what’s making a decision hard in the first place.
You might have too many options.
You might be comparing things that don’t belong together.
You might be trying to anticipate every possible consequence.
Or you might be so close to the situation that it’s difficult to see another way forward.
That’s where having someone to think things through with can make a difference.
As a Trusted Thinking Partner, I help business owners step outside the day-to-day demands of running their business and look at what’s creating the friction.
Sometimes that means challenging an assumption.
Sometimes it means helping someone see that several apparently separate problems are connected.
And sometimes it’s simply having the space to talk through a decision without needing to reach an answer immediately.
The aim isn’t for me to make the decision for you.
It’s for you to feel clearer and more confident about making it yourself.
One Decision, Four Questions
If there’s something you’ve been going round in circles about, you don’t need to complete every exercise in this article.
Start with one decision and ask:
✂️ Cut: Which options can I stop considering?
👁️ Make It Concrete: What would each remaining option mean in practice?
🗂️ Categorise: Am I comparing the right things?
👣 Build Up Complexity: What’s the smallest useful decision I can make first?
You might not arrive at a final answer immediately.
But you may discover that the decision itself isn’t quite as complicated as it first appeared.
Sometimes, making progress starts with making the choice easier to navigate.
Inspired by the work of Sheena Iyengar on choice and decision-making, including her TED Talk, How to Make Choosing Easier.