How to Stop Second Guessing Yourself and Trust Decisions

You booked the flat. Within an hour you are back on the property site, comparing it with the one that was slightly cheaper and slightly further away. If you are trying to work out how to stop second guessing yourself, the core fix is less about confidence and more about structure: decide what “good enough” means before you choose, give the decision a deadline, then give yourself a rule for when you’re allowed to reopen it. Trust tends to grow from a track record of decisions you kept, not from a feeling you wait for.

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Second-guessing is common in people who care about getting things right. On its own it doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you; it usually means the decision process has no clear finish line.

What may be going on

You’re aiming for the best, not the good enough. Barry Schwartz and colleagues described “maximisers”, people who try to find the single best option, and “satisficers”, who pick the first option that meets their criteria. In their surveys, maximisers reported more regret and less satisfaction with their choices, even when the choices were objectively fine. If every decision has to be optimal, every decision stays open.

Regret is louder than relief. Justin Kruger and colleagues looked at why students believe “stick with your first answer” on exams, even though answer changes more often go from wrong to right. Their explanation: switching and being wrong produces a sharp “if only” feeling that we remember, while sticking and being wrong fades. The memory is lopsided. The same thing can happen with everyday decisions, so the scary cases feel more common than they are.

No end point. If you never decided what information would be “enough”, there’s always one more review to read and one more person to ask.

Tiredness. Choices made late at night or after a long day can feel shakier. The popular idea of “decision fatigue” is worth holding loosely: some of the original lab findings on willpower running out have not held up well in large replications. Still, most people notice they decide less clearly when they are worn out, and it’s sensible to keep big choices for a rested hour.

Why it feeds itself

Every time you reopen a choice, you gather a bit more doubt, and a bit of relief when you decide to keep it after all. That relief rewards the checking, so you check more next time. Meanwhile you don’t get to see the decision play out, which is the only real test of it. You end up with lots of anxiety and very little feedback.

What helps: a decision routine you can repeat

1. Write three “good enough” criteria first. For a laptop: under a set budget, at least 8 GB of RAM, a battery that lasts a working day. Anything meeting all three counts.
2. Set a deadline that matches the stakes. Ten minutes for a restaurant, two days for a phone, two weeks for a job offer. Put it in your calendar.
3. Cap your inputs. Decide in advance: three reviews, two people’s opinions, one comparison table. Then stop gathering.
4. Decide, then write it down. One line in a notes app: what you chose, why, and what you expect to happen.
5. Set a review date instead of reopening now. “I’ll look at this again on the 30th.” Until then, the matter is closed.

The “good enough” criteria card

A worked example

Say Usman has two job offers: a bank in Lahore with better pay and a smaller firm in Islamabad with more training. He has gone back and forth for a week. He writes his criteria: salary covers rent and savings; a manager who trains juniors; commute under 45 minutes. Both meet the salary bar; only the smaller firm clearly meets the training one. He gives himself until Thursday, talks to one former colleague, and accepts on Wednesday night. On Friday the doubt arrives: “What if the bank was the smarter move?” He checks his “reopen only if” line: a new fact, such as the firm withdrawing training. No new fact, so he leaves it. He sets a review date three months in. By then he has real information to judge with, instead of a 2 am guess.

A decision journal (five minutes a week)

Keep a simple running list: date, decision, what you expected, what happened. After a couple of months you’ll have evidence of how often your decisions turned out fine, and where they didn’t, why. That record is what “trusting your gut” usually means in practice: experience you can point to.

What about trusting your gut?

Gut feelings can be useful where you have lots of experience and quick feedback, like a cook judging when the oil is hot. In unfamiliar territory (your first car, a move abroad), a gut feeling is often just a preference for the familiar. Use it as one input on your criteria card, not as the final judge. And “my first instinct is always right” is not something you need to live by.

What makes it worse

• Asking a fifth and sixth person after you’ve already decided.
• Reading reviews of the option you didn’t choose.
• Making big decisions at midnight.
• Treating small choices (which kurta, which café) as if they were permanent.
• Waiting to feel certain before you act. Certainty often arrives after the decision, not before.

Second-guessing: your questions answered

Sources

• Schwartz et al. (2002). Maximizing versus satisficing: happiness is a matter of choice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
• Kruger, Wirtz and Miller (2005). Counterfactual thinking and the first instinct fallacy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.