And maybe you’ve been there yourself. All those undecided decisions weighing down on you–you can’t make any progress because of all those dependencies. Everything else seems to hinge on the first decision. Without it, none of the other possibilities can unfold.

Being good at making decisions is part of being highly productive. The skills that allow you to assess what’s what, sort through the costs and payoffs, match actions to goals, and then pick something are essential. In terms of the Seven Dimensions of Productivity, decision making feeds into

• Results: doing the right things and achieving what you set out to achieve
• Strategy: setting direction, monitoring progress, gathering insight and learning as you go along
• Fulfillment and satisfaction: Deriving the joy and pleasure from what you achieve, living life to its fullest

There are a lot of reasons why people fail to choose . Here’s a quick preview of some of them:

• They are faced with too many options and don’t know how to whittle them down. Studies show that when people have too many choices in front of them, they get paralyzed and often fail to choose at all.
• Insufficient understanding of what your goals are. If you don’t know where you’re going, you can’t decide how to get there. (This list of questions by Rosabeth Moss Kanter will help you get started on matching your passion to your aspirations.)
• Getting stuck on maximizing instead of satisficing. This is the difference between perfectionism and “good enoughism.”

Want to know more? You can get the full story on how to master the decision-making process here.)