I’m a self-confessed perfectionist. I’m not sure when it happened but I think that the crucible that we know of as “high school” had something to do with it. Being a perfectionist has served me well since then.

It’s made me tenacious in finding out the “why” of things, whether they be networking issues, programming issues, or a simple as making a good homemade Balsamic Vinaigrette.

However, perfectionism does come with its downside. Well, at least for me it does. The downside is what I call Decision Paralysis. Generally stated, Decision Paralysis can be defined as the inability to make a decision when there are too many choices.

Usually when this happens I try to investigate every possible outcome or dig into the details of every detail and eventually I become overwhelmed and I go play video games or do something to slack off.

There are many different forms of this. For example, this blog. There are many, many articles that I’ve wanted to write, but instead of, as Nike suggests – Just Doing It – I put if off because the article has to be just right for me to post it. No errors, no inconsistencies. It just has to be perfect. Therefore nothing gets done (except for video game playing).

Here’s another example. My home email server, which has been affectionately referred to as the “copier” by my friend Robert. It took men stronger and beefier than me to get it from one place to another the last time that I moved.

If this server was a Playboy Playmate, it would have been a centerfold back in the ’70s. Curvaceous and busty in all the right places; not a skinny, little waif like Mac Mini. This thing has some meat on its bones.

Made of all steel and weighing in at ~80 lbs, it’s at least 2′×2′×2′ and expels more heat than a Habanero Pepper. Anyway, I’m starting to ramble.

I’ve decided to retire the buxom server and bring in a smaller, more lightweight server. Here’s the conundrum. The old server had Exchange Server 2003 but I had considered installing an open source email program on the new server, but which version? There’s Sendmail, Qmail, Postfix, and countless other versions. Of course I’ll want it to have all the bells and whistles in it which means even more choices. Do I want Courier, UW IMAP, Cyrus, Dovecot as my IMAP service?

If that’s not enough there are the particulars of making sure that the email that I’ve been accruing over the last 4-6 years makes it to the new service. Boy, that buxom server isn’t starting to look so bad anymore.

Decision Paralysis can affect people that aren’t traditionally perfectionists as well. The masterful Ilya Grigorik tackles this phenomenon in his post The Non-Paradox of Choice.

The article, which has thorough analysis of this behavior, eventually boils down to this: Weigh as many choices as you can, make your choice and be happy with it. If we continue to believe that there is something better than our current choice then we won’t be happy with it.

Naturally, Ilya presents it in a much more elegant fashion, so I hope you’ll take the time out to read his whole article.

What’s the lesson with all of this? Sometimes you just have to make a choice, take a path, and start on that task without being paralyzed with all the options before you.