You’ve probably heard, and read, a lot about analysis paralysis already. Especially if it’s something you struggle with. For the purposes of this article, we’ll define Analysis Paralysis as the state of over-thinking about a decision to the point that a choice never gets made. It’s a common pit fall of owning and managing a business. It can be small, like what color should your t shirts be? Or have far reaching consequences like how much should you raise your prices? They both seem like pretty straightforward questions of varying importance but if you’re a business owner, especially a fairly new one, even just the idea of them probably made your heart rate go up a little. It’s a catchy name but it can have serious ramifications to your life and your bottom line. Today we’re going to delve into some of my own experiences with analysis paralysis, what I learned, and how I got through them.
If you haven’t yet read the first entry in this blog, you might want to give it a look. A lot of this post will refer back to that and while I’ll give a short review, it would be helpful if you had the whole picture. You can find it here: https://www.laurenpiner.com/fts/fail-blog. As you now know, the 4th year of my business found me with crippling credit card debt and no way out. This, in large part, was due to analysis paralysis. I knew very early that my billing system wasn’t working. I immediately started researching. I needed a more advanced system that would track services, billing, maybe even do some accounting. I asked around, I looked at all kinds of programs. After a couple of months I made a decision that I thought would work. For 4-6 months my staff and I entered client info and tried to learn the new system and guess what? It didn’t work. I spent probably about $2000 in wages and paying for the service to find out it DIDN’T WORK. Plus I was still losing money! I was freaking out. And now, there was a complicating factor. I didn’t trust myself anymore. I had made such a wrong decision about this that I didn’t believe I could make a right one.
I had no idea what to do and I felt completely lost. I know now that this would have been a great time to ask for help (actually it would have been a good time to ask for help before I made the first decision). I had it in my head that it was my company and no one but me could make this decision. No one could understand what I needed for it. Some of that might be true. When I did ask people they would recommend things that definitely wouldn’t work because they didn’t know what I was looking for. Of course, I didn’t know what I was looking for. I googled pet sitting software and got very few hits. I wasn’t part of any professional groups. I didn’t have a business consultant. I was completely on my own and it was terrifying. I didn’t even know how to find someone to help. Finally, I went back to a software a friend recommended. I’m not sure if they had made changes since the first time I had looked at it or if I just was able to see its value but I went for it. The transition was painful but it worked! While the software I chose is not perfect it did (and still does) what I needed it to. Once I caught all the clients up in the system the money came in. I was finally, actually, running a successful business.
As far as pushing through the analysis paralysis going forward from this point, I did a few things. One was to make a list of all the good decisions I had made. When I didn’t trust myself, I could refer to them and remember that, most of the time, my instincts are good. I also began writing down my problems. Sometimes it looked like a pros and cons list, sometimes more like a to do list from the first blog post. Seeing it on paper helped me frame it in a more approachable way. If, after writing it down, I was still confused I would start asking around and getting input from people in my circle I trusted. I would go through the list with them and ask them if they thought I might be missing something. This weekend, I looked at 5 houses and before leaving my realtor I told her I was ready to make an offer on one. I didn’t overthink it, I didn’t call my friends or family, I just did it. It gets better.
Analysis Paralysis is challenging and often sneaky. It’s easy to throw yourself into the research and try and find all the answers before you have to make a choice. After all, if you’re gathering information you don’t have to make a decision right? Wrong. Doing your due diligence is important but there will always be another article to read, colleague to consult, internet search to do. Eventually, you just have to choose. This of course is easier said than done. When I think I might be stuck in a research black hole I like to stop for a minute and ask myself a question. Do I have two or three perspectives? I might write them down to make sure they make sense to me. If one seems highly detailed and another isn’t, I’ll search a little for more information on the lightly researched one. Once I have those perspectives, it’s deadline time. I give myself a day, maybe a week, and then I have to choose. It’s like when you were in school and had a big homework assignment. You had the best of intentions to do a little every day but then suddenly it’s the night before and you’ve done next to nothing. You need the deadline. You owe it to yourself to stick with it.
Thanks so much for reading! Please share a time when you went through analysis paralysis. What did you learn? How do you avoid it now? Next week we’ll be talking about bite size self care.