132. Decision Debt: A Framework for Better Decision-Making
Are you drowning in unmade decisions? I call this "decision debt" – the accumulation of postponed choices that drain your energy and keep you stuck in a perpetual state of indecision. As interior designers, we help clients make decisions every day, but often struggle with our own business decisions, letting them pile up until they become overwhelming.
Decision-making is the foundation of growing any business. From naming your company to setting fees, hiring employees, and marketing your services, progress requires decisive action. Yet many designers get trapped in unfinished decision loops, creating mental clutter that consumes creative energy and emotional bandwidth without moving the business forward.
In this episode, I'm sharing my framework for clearing decision debt and developing stronger decision-making muscles. I'll help you understand why you might be avoiding decisions, how to identify your unmade choices, and implement a practical system for making decisions with confidence. When you free yourself from decision debt, you'll experience more momentum, clarity, and energy to pursue your vision for your interior design business.
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What You’ll Discover from this Episode:
How to identify the hidden "decision debt" that's draining your energy and keeping you stuck.
Why perfectionism creates a never-ending loop of "what-ifs" that prevents decisive action.
The five common reasons designers avoid making decisions in their businesses.
How to create a practical system for making decisions with confidence and without self-judgment.
The decision implementation cycle that turns even "wrong" decisions into valuable learning opportunities.
How to build self-trust through consistent decision-making rather than seeking external validation.
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122. 3 Game-Changing Routines Every Interior Design CEO Needs
124. Fear of Wasting Time: Why Withholding Effort Holds You Back
Full Episode Transcript:
Hey designer, you're listening to episode 132. In this one, I'm going to be talking about a concept I call decision debt. It's what happens when we drag out, procrastinate on, and avoid decision-making. And let me tell you, it will drain your energy when you have those unmade decisions hanging over your head. And it also keeps you stuck.
This episode is perfect for you if you consider yourself indecisive, fret over making good decisions, and if you're feeling bogged down in the process of moving your interior design business forward because of these unclosed loops.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place.
I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
Hello designer, welcome back to the podcast. I'm so glad to be here. I'm sitting down on a Monday morning, recording this for you. This past weekend we went to Madison, Wisconsin. That's where I grew up. I also went to school there and that's where I completed my interior design degree.
And what was really fun about this trip, well, I met up with my freshman year roommate. We're still very close. So I got to spend some time with her and her family. And if you're familiar with Madison, there's a great downtown area where there's the capital, the campus, the Memorial Union Terrace. So we did some fun things with the kids there. I also walked up Langdon Street, which is the street that has all of the fraternities and sororities, and found my old sorority house that I lived in. And it was really fun. Got my picture outside of the front door so I could send it to my friends and be like, "Look where I am."
And then I decided I'd be one of those alums who knocks on the door and sees if I can get let in. So I went up to the door, I rang the doorbell. It was not appearing to be working or otherwise no one was home, which I found really hard to believe. So I started peeking into the windows. And this was like total classic awkwardness. I'm peering in the front window, and the sun's really strong and so I can't really see in there. And all of a sudden, I see there's like two girls staring at me.
But anyways, they let me in, and they were so sweet. And it was really fun to see the inside of the house. It had been many, many years since I'd seen it, and gave me just a really good chance to reflect on my time there. And, you know, one of the things I was really thinking about is during my time, I was the Vice President of Membership. And how influential that experience has been in my life, just in terms of my professional development.
I was thinking about specifically during Rush, which is, you know, if you're not familiar, it's when everyone kind of goes and checks out the different houses. We do lots of meet and greets to see kind of who we'd have interested in joining our house, who we'd love to have so that it's a good fit. But I was thinking about standing in front of hundreds of young women at a time, like opening that front door that I walked through this past weekend, and greeting these young women, announcing who I was, what our chapter was about. And, you know, even the travel opportunities that I had as a part of that position to go to the national conference and be with all these professional women. So I'm just very grateful for that experience and thinking about all of the ways that being in that phase of my life influenced confidence, leadership, my ability to communicate, all of those good things.
So anyways, that is what I have been up to. As I was thinking about what I wanted to talk about on the podcast this week, decision-making has been really prevalent for me in my own business in the last couple of weeks. You know, think partly that has been the turnover of the quarter, preparing for summer, all of those types of things. And what I decided I wanted to bring to you today is this concept of decision debt.
When I think about what it takes to grow an interior design business or any business for that matter, it's about making decisions. If you think about even just the very start of your business, you had to figure out what to name it. And figuring it out really isn't figuring it out. It's making a decision. And you have to decide, how do I want to structure my processes? How do I want to set my fees? When do I bring on my first employee? When is it time to grow my team? How am I going to market my services? What areas am I going to serve?
The foundation of any business, the foundation of growing a business is decision making. Without making decisions, you simply cannot progress. And of course, your decisions continue to evolve. It's not ever we make one decision and that's it for the rest of our lives. I mean, some decisions, I think there's a thread and they do carry with us, but a lot of times we're redeciding. And the impact of our decisions evolve as we grow as leaders. And really we're working always to align the decisions we make with our values and our vision for the company.
So, consistent decision-making is incredibly important. And it's really crucial to the development of your firm and its growth. Yet, what I see consistently with so many of the clients that I interface with, whether they're my own private clients or other designers I talk to, it's easy to get stuck in unfinished decision loops. And this is so draining.
These unfinished loops start to accumulate. This is the real issue, right? You can have an unfinished decision. It's kind of weighty. But what ends up happening is these loops of unmade, essentially actions you decide to take, accumulate and create what I'm going to refer to today as decision debt.
I even want you to start thinking about this as a design project. Let's say you're designing a ground-up build. Of course, we know like one of the major things that we offer to a client as an interior designer is to help them make decisions. And that service of supporting your client starts with you making the decisions.
So let's just say you've got this ground-up build. And what happens to this project if you don't start making decisions as the designer? The project doesn't get built. If you don't decide the floor plan, the framing can't be done. If you don't decide where the plumbing goes in the bathroom, no fixtures can be installed. If you don't decide how the walls are treated, maybe it's with paint, with tile, wallpaper, the homeowner will never have a space that is finished and that they can move into.
What I want you to see is that if you delay and prolong decisions in this way with a client project, there is a massive leg in getting to the end goal. There is a cost to that in that the client doesn't get what they want, which is their home. And there's probably even costs getting associated with this. Maybe they're paying two mortgages where they're living in one home and having another one built, right? They don't get closer to the goal unless you make decisions. And the weight of that begins to accumulate. Your timelines get all bogged down. I mean, it's just a mess.
And the same thing happens in your business when you're prolonging, avoiding, and procrastinating on decisions. Decisions are really taking steps toward what you want. With all of my private clients, I always start with helping them create their business and life vision. That is the North Star of where they're going. And decisions are required along the way to get to that vision.
And when you don't make decisions, what ends up happening is they just run in the background of your mind. It's like this mental clutter taking up the bandwidth of your thought processes, your creative energy, your emotional bandwidth. It just starts to tank. And not only that, you might even be layering on self-judgment then about how you should have already made a decision, making the whole thing even more exhausting.
So then you're expending energy and don't forget time too, because if we think about how much time mental rumination takes up during the day, you're not getting anywhere, right? So you're taking the time and energy without moving forward. And decisions will just start to pile up on you. This is decision debt. And we're going to talk about how to get rid of this debt. But before we do that, what's really important to understand is why you might not be making a decision. We always want to start with awareness and understanding of ourselves because that's where we solve for the root issue.
A big reason you might not be making decisions is because of your identity. And this is coming from a fixed mindset and meaning it's just the way I am. And when I talk about identity, it's really just a belief you have about yourself. It is not fixed. It's fluid. It can evolve. But often we're going around talking about ourselves as if we just are the way we are, and that is immovable. So what this could sound like in this instance is just declaring, “I'm indecisive. I've always been indecisive. I can't make a decision.”
Let me tell you though, there is no decisiveness gene. You did not inherit this. Maybe it was modeled to you by someone in your life as a way of being, but you can become decisive. So if that is an identity that you possess, I highly, highly recommend you start to explore how that is not true. I guarantee there are places where you make decisions strongly and boldly. And you can start to shift this as something you are evolving into.
And the other thing that comes into play here sometimes is believing that you are a responsible person. Now, I like to be responsible in general. That's the thing I like about myself. I like to believe that about myself. But here's where it can get tricky. Sometimes there's a connection that we create for ourselves or we pick up from somewhere along the way, that responsible equals taking a really long time to think about things. We'll talk a little bit later about how to make considerations if that's something you want to do, if you don't want to just decide.
So you can absolutely do that. And you aren't more responsible the more you think about it. That's not true. So if you're believing “I'm responsible,” or “it's almost responsible to be indecisive,” I want you to consider that is false. And consider also that it is actually irresponsible to your business to drag out a decision. It truly does not serve you to take more time than necessary. Okay? So that's the first one.
Second reason we often don't make decisions, and this is so, so common with the types of clients I work with, is perfectionism. There is a fear of making a right or wrong decision. Now, right or wrong decision is directly related to perfectionism because when we are in a perfectionistic mindset, again, we're not going to identify as “I'm a perfectionist,” right? Because that again, doesn't exist. We don't have inherent perfectionism.
But we want to avoid someone seeing us as less than or seeing us as inadequate in any way, whether that's other people that we are perceiving to have those thoughts about ourselves or we have that judgment of ourselves, right? We don't want to be seen as wrong. So there's lots and lots of pressure that we have to make the right decision, and we must avoid a wrong decision at all costs. This is where it becomes a problem. Because there is a never-ending loop of what-ifs that you're going to end up trying to solve for. What if this happens? What if this? What if that? Right? There's always a possibility of it being a wrong decision because we don't ever truly know the outcome of what we've decided until it's done and in action, after the fact. Okay?
So there's no amount of overthinking that we can do that's going to prevent or guarantee an outcome. And if you accept this as truth, which I have absolutely seen that is true, then if we're waiting for guarantee of a right decision, we will be waiting forever. And that means more drawn-out decision making.
And a lot of times, too, one of the sneaky ways I'll see this is that clients will want to wait till the last minute to decide. And this is true of a lot of things with perfectionistic tendencies, is waiting till the last minute because you end up relying on being pushed up against some wall or deadline, whatever it is, to force you past your perfectionistic tendencies. There just becomes the point of, “this can't go on anymore, so now I have to decide,” versus proactively deciding ahead of time that you're going to make an empowered choice and move forward and go with it. And you'll figure out the rest as you go.
Another hiccup that causes a lot of delays in the decision-making process is lack of self-trust or self-leadership. So what this can look like is waiting for someone else to confirm your answer, your own internal answer about what you want to do or how you want to move forward. In some ways, this is a little bit similar to that perfectionism of we're looking to someone else to tell us what is right. So we want that sign of approval so that we can then trust ourselves, right? We're trusting somebody else more than we trust our own opinion and relying on somebody else to create that internal safety, which no one can actually give us that. We have to give that to ourselves.
And the other way this kind of shows up is we might know what we want to do or how we want to progress. And we're waiting for someone else to give us permission to do what we're being guided to do internally. Or we are withholding the permission from ourselves. You know, sometimes I'll see this where it's like, yes, absolutely, go do that. And that's coming from some sort of external source like maybe an accountant or CFO around, yes, you absolutely have the funds to do this. And then the designer is still not giving permission to oneself to move forward, right? Going back to that right, wrong decision.
Okay. So here's another one. We don't like to cut off options. That's what decision-making does. If you make a decision to go one way, you cut off, at least temporarily, other possibilities. And we like to do this because it makes us feel safe to have lots of doors open and feel like we could go in any possible direction at any time. Now, I gave a lot of bigger examples at the start of this episode about, you know, the decisions you might need to make in your business. But I even see this with prioritization, right? What am I going to do today? Or what am I going to do this week? Or which marketing channels am I going to prioritize? That would be slightly bigger, right?
But when we prioritize, we are making a decision, essentially. We're cutting off some options and pursuing others. Okay? Sometimes we mistakenly think that if we don't make a decision, we can have it all the ways. But what really happens is we don't have any ways. It's like trying to hike up multiple trails on a mountain at once. It does not work. You simply can't do it. So, coming to terms with there is a cutting off as a part of the decision-making process. That is what is supposed to happen versus believing it's something to be avoided.
Okay. Let's talk about the last reason I want to highlight here why you might not be making decisions. And that is because you have not decided to make the time for it, or you don't have a process for decision-making. And I'm going to share some of my process for decision-making. But a lot of what this boils down to is planning. Planning is decision-making.
One of the reasons why I am such a huge advocate of planning, whether that's on a daily, weekly, quarterly, and yearly scale, is that when you make decisions in advance, it's so much easier and efficient when it comes time to execute. You've done the mental labor of decision-making and so then you can just get to work. So sometimes we're thinking we really need to make this decision, but instead of deciding when we're going to prioritize that decision making, sitting down to think about what we need to think about, make plans, whatever it is, we're hoping it's just going to somehow resolve in the back of our brain as we run about our day. But for a lot of decisions, they are something that do require some consideration, and so we have to make time to decide and plan.
Part of this planning can be deciding what research or guidance you want to have completed. Then you can simply identify what you need or want to make the decision as part of your planning process. So this is, you know, getting more into planning, but even in your quarterly plan of deciding what projects you're working on and then the decisions you need to make about that project, the steps you need to take, all of that can go in your plan.
Before we dive into making moves to clear that decision debt, I want you to just pause and reflect and think about some of the ways that decision making gets put aside and the underlying issue that's really at play for why you've maybe procrastinated on or avoided a decision. Just take a moment and check in, and just see which one resonated. That's really, really good to know.
And now we're going to move into talking about making those decisions. How are you going to get out of the decision debt and keep it from accumulating in the future? The very first thing you're going to do is simply make a list of your unmade decisions, big and small. Essentially, when you start doing this brain dump, your decision debt is being put on paper so you can see it clearly and decide then how you're going to move forward. As I mentioned earlier, you can begin to put these decisions into your planning, and depending on the scope, it could be something that could be done today, it could be this week, maybe this quarter. But you really want to start to see what's been ruminating or looping in the back of your brain in full clarity.
One of the things you might even see with this is that you're thinking one decision to be made is actually many decisions all in one. And I highly suggest that you separate those out to make them more clear to you, less confusing, and potentially less overwhelming. This was actually something that I really noticed in myself when I've been doing some podcast planning recently. And I had noticed this sort of subtle sense of overwhelm. And it's quite rare that I have that like big, dramatic overwhelm that I used to experience long ago. For me, overwhelm is not this like frantic flinging about. You know, I'm I'm like picturing myself in a dizzy cloud or something. It's really this feeling of like my brain slowly shutting down and maybe being a little bit confused. So it's like a withdrawing from the task at hand, essentially.
That's more of the type of overwhelm that I feel now. But I noticed that was going on. And as I was doing some self-coaching in my weekly review, what I realized was that I was trying to make a future decision that actually hinged on a previous decision to be made. So I was thinking that I had one decision to be made, but actually there was a series of like mini decisions to make up that bigger decision. So it's like trying to complete step six of a puzzle when, you know, you need to come back and just do step one. So you might notice that when you are downloading all of those unmade decisions on your paper.
Once you have those decisions front and center, you're going to need to start making a decision about what you're going to do first. So make a strong decision, go all in, and allow yourself to see how this works. So you're going to start to clear the decks. And I recommend if this is something where you tend to get really hung up, pick something small that feels low stakes to start, because I really do want you to start to experience how freeing and light it can feel to make a decision.
And also in making your strong decisions from the list that you created, you could also just decide that some of the things you've been thinking you need to decide are actually going to be tabled for now. So, for an example of this, maybe you're going to be planning to switch project management software platforms this year, but you also know you don't really have capacity to dive into this research right now. So this is like a cutting off, like we talked about before. So your decision could be just to make note of this and know that it's a decision you're going to make, like which platform to go with in the future, and you're going to set it aside for now. That's the decision. And then revisit it next quarter. So you're deciding to set it off to the side, and then you're deciding when you will revisit that internal conversation.
So that's one example. Or maybe the decision is something really more broad, like you're sensing the vision for the company is expanding. But it's not an immediate decision or you have that internal knowing that it's not to be rushed right now, that it is something that is evolving and you need to let it marinate for a little bit. So you can decide you don't have to decide right now. Especially for something that can be more nuanced like this, it's really individualized and something, you know, where coaching can be so supportive. But it's also an opportunity to just check in with yourself. Am I avoiding this, or is it something that really does need to kind of settle into the background, and I can release the expectation of knowing right now?
Once you know what those decisions are and the one you're going to take action on deciding right away, if there is information or facts that you need to gather or a trusted opinion you want to go get, be explicit about what that looks like for you. I'll often hear clients say, “I need to think about it.” Okay. That's fine. But what does that mean? How will you know when you are ready to make a decision? Are you going to have some data, some numbers? Are you going to have researched a number of options? Is there somebody that you want to talk to about their personal experience with this? Just be very clear. I'm not ever saying you just need to decide and don't need to think about things or consider anything, right? But we don't want to have this like vague, “I need to think about it,” right? Because we could think about something for forever.
So, decide what it is you want to know or have in order to make the decision, and then give yourself a decision deadline. This is the date in which you will have made a decision and move on with your life. That's always the phrase that I use. I'm like, “I'm ready to move on with my life.” Now, decision deadlines can also be very helpful for your design project clients, but that's another topic for another day, but just, I'll plant that seed.
Okay. So then once you have the information that you want, you're going to enter into what I call the decision implementation cycle. Essentially, what this is that you make a decision, you implement the decision, and then you evaluate what happened. And this is the cycle that you continue in until you get your desired result. So, based on your evaluation, the decision you make, once it's implemented, something will happen. And you'll have data to draw on, you'll have experiences to reflect on. And then from your evaluation, you make a new decision, you implement that decision, and you gather new information.
When you're in the decision implementation cycle, you'll either arrive at your desired outcome in which you can complete that cycle or you'll have new information to inform your next steps. If you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you know how important I find evaluation. So if you are newer or need a refresher, definitely check out episode 122. It's called 3 Game-Changing Habits Every CEO Needs. That is a great introduction into evaluation and why it's so important. And of course, it is part of this decision implementation cycle.
The last thing is, I really want you to make an agreement with yourself that you will not be mean to yourself about a decision you've made. This is a key part of being willing to make decisions and make moves in your business. The first thing I want you to remember is that it's easy to judge your decisions way too early in the process. Going back to this idea of making good or bad or right or wrong decisions, sometimes we make decisions that lead to outcomes we didn't want or at least not what we wanted to happen. But I always want you to be keeping in mind that it's totally possible that quote unquote bad decision is just part of the process that's going to eventually lead to the end result you want. You thought the decision would lead to one thing or you thought it would take a certain amount of effort or action, and you were wrong. So then you just figure out what to do next in that decision implementation cycle.
I want you to notice the softness that I'm talking about that with. It's not a, “you messed up, you did this wrong, you've got to do it again.” Okay? It's just, “No, my guess was off. Let's figure out what I want to do next.” Now, the second thing is adopting the belief about yourself that you will figure it out. When you trust yourself to navigate the outcomes of your decisions, there's so much less to fear. One of the kindest, most supportive things you can do for yourself is to say, “I made the best decision I could with the information I had at the time.” And I really want you to think about how much more likely you'll be to keep moving forward and keep making decisions to move you closer to the interior design business you want if you didn't have to hide from your own criticism.
So those are the steps for getting out of and staying out of decision debt. I'm going to recap them, and then I've got just a little bit more I want to share. So the first one is to make a list of all of your unmade decisions, big and small. Then you're going to make a strong decision about which decision you're going to tackle first. If there is information or facts you need to gather, get crystal clear on what that is and when, and how you will be gathering that information so you can decide by a certain date. And then you're going to enter into the decision implementation cycle. And lastly, throughout this entire process, you're going to make an agreement with yourself that you will be kind about whatever happens.
Decision-making is simple. It's all of the mental baggage we bring with it that makes it so complicated. And when you get out of this decision debt, you really are going to move forward more quickly, and you build momentum. And you're freeing up your energy to solve for challenges, not just think about them. And of course, you're going to build a stronger relationship with yourself as the leader of your company because you know you can count on you to take action, adjust as needed, and keep going in pursuit of your goals.
And as we wrap up, I really want you to consider the impact of no longer using your energy to loop on the same unmade decisions over and over again. Wouldn't you rather make a decision, build on it and produce new results in your business? I think the answer would be yes. It is way more empowering to be in that driver's seat.
So I hope that you pick just one decision that's been following you around. Use what you've learned today and draw the line in the sand. And of course, I'd love to hear how you're using this concept. You can send me a message about the decision you made or how you're using this process. And in private coaching, I can help you make decisions that are best for your unique business while also helping you build the skills of decisiveness and self trust, which go hand in hand. If you're interested in working together one one-on-one, make sure you head over to desicreswell.com/coaching, and that is where you can learn all about my Design to Thrive private coaching partnerships and join the wait list.
I'll be back next week with a brand new episode as always. And in the meantime, I highly encourage you to listen to or revisit episode 124, Fear of Wasting Time, episode 122, Three Game Changing CEO Habits, and even go back to the beginning of the podcast, episode 22 where I talk about automated decisions, which is my process for making less decisions on these ongoing basis so that I have more bandwidth for the important stuff. And then of course, follow the show wherever you listen so you don't miss what's coming up. Until we talk again next Wednesday, I'm wishing you a beautiful week.
Thanks for joining me for this week's episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit DesiCreswell.com, where you’ll get immediate access to a variety of free resources to help you take what you learn on the podcast and put it into action. And if you love what you’re hearing, be sure to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I’ll talk to you next week.
This episode is perfect for you if you consider yourself indecisive, fret over making good decisions, and if you're feeling bogged down in the process of moving your interior design business forward because of these unclosed loops.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place.
I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
Hello designer, welcome back to the podcast. I'm so glad to be here. I'm sitting down on a Monday morning, recording this for you. This past weekend we went to Madison, Wisconsin. That's where I grew up. I also went to school there and that's where I completed my interior design degree.
And what was really fun about this trip, well, I met up with my freshman year roommate. We're still very close. So I got to spend some time with her and her family. And if you're familiar with Madison, there's a great downtown area where there's the capital, the campus, the Memorial Union Terrace. So we did some fun things with the kids there. I also walked up Langdon Street, which is the street that has all of the fraternities and sororities, and found my old sorority house that I lived in. And it was really fun. Got my picture outside of the front door so I could send it to my friends and be like, "Look where I am."
And then I decided I'd be one of those alums who knocks on the door and sees if I can get let in. So I went up to the door, I rang the doorbell. It was not appearing to be working or otherwise no one was home, which I found really hard to believe. So I started peeking into the windows. And this was like total classic awkwardness. I'm peering in the front window, and the sun's really strong and so I can't really see in there. And all of a sudden, I see there's like two girls staring at me.
But anyways, they let me in, and they were so sweet. And it was really fun to see the inside of the house. It had been many, many years since I'd seen it, and gave me just a really good chance to reflect on my time there. And, you know, one of the things I was really thinking about is during my time, I was the Vice President of Membership. And how influential that experience has been in my life, just in terms of my professional development.
I was thinking about specifically during Rush, which is, you know, if you're not familiar, it's when everyone kind of goes and checks out the different houses. We do lots of meet and greets to see kind of who we'd have interested in joining our house, who we'd love to have so that it's a good fit. But I was thinking about standing in front of hundreds of young women at a time, like opening that front door that I walked through this past weekend, and greeting these young women, announcing who I was, what our chapter was about. And, you know, even the travel opportunities that I had as a part of that position to go to the national conference and be with all these professional women. So I'm just very grateful for that experience and thinking about all of the ways that being in that phase of my life influenced confidence, leadership, my ability to communicate, all of those good things.
So anyways, that is what I have been up to. As I was thinking about what I wanted to talk about on the podcast this week, decision-making has been really prevalent for me in my own business in the last couple of weeks. You know, think partly that has been the turnover of the quarter, preparing for summer, all of those types of things. And what I decided I wanted to bring to you today is this concept of decision debt.
When I think about what it takes to grow an interior design business or any business for that matter, it's about making decisions. If you think about even just the very start of your business, you had to figure out what to name it. And figuring it out really isn't figuring it out. It's making a decision. And you have to decide, how do I want to structure my processes? How do I want to set my fees? When do I bring on my first employee? When is it time to grow my team? How am I going to market my services? What areas am I going to serve?
The foundation of any business, the foundation of growing a business is decision making. Without making decisions, you simply cannot progress. And of course, your decisions continue to evolve. It's not ever we make one decision and that's it for the rest of our lives. I mean, some decisions, I think there's a thread and they do carry with us, but a lot of times we're redeciding. And the impact of our decisions evolve as we grow as leaders. And really we're working always to align the decisions we make with our values and our vision for the company.
So, consistent decision-making is incredibly important. And it's really crucial to the development of your firm and its growth. Yet, what I see consistently with so many of the clients that I interface with, whether they're my own private clients or other designers I talk to, it's easy to get stuck in unfinished decision loops. And this is so draining.
These unfinished loops start to accumulate. This is the real issue, right? You can have an unfinished decision. It's kind of weighty. But what ends up happening is these loops of unmade, essentially actions you decide to take, accumulate and create what I'm going to refer to today as decision debt.
I even want you to start thinking about this as a design project. Let's say you're designing a ground-up build. Of course, we know like one of the major things that we offer to a client as an interior designer is to help them make decisions. And that service of supporting your client starts with you making the decisions.
So let's just say you've got this ground-up build. And what happens to this project if you don't start making decisions as the designer? The project doesn't get built. If you don't decide the floor plan, the framing can't be done. If you don't decide where the plumbing goes in the bathroom, no fixtures can be installed. If you don't decide how the walls are treated, maybe it's with paint, with tile, wallpaper, the homeowner will never have a space that is finished and that they can move into.
What I want you to see is that if you delay and prolong decisions in this way with a client project, there is a massive leg in getting to the end goal. There is a cost to that in that the client doesn't get what they want, which is their home. And there's probably even costs getting associated with this. Maybe they're paying two mortgages where they're living in one home and having another one built, right? They don't get closer to the goal unless you make decisions. And the weight of that begins to accumulate. Your timelines get all bogged down. I mean, it's just a mess.
And the same thing happens in your business when you're prolonging, avoiding, and procrastinating on decisions. Decisions are really taking steps toward what you want. With all of my private clients, I always start with helping them create their business and life vision. That is the North Star of where they're going. And decisions are required along the way to get to that vision.
And when you don't make decisions, what ends up happening is they just run in the background of your mind. It's like this mental clutter taking up the bandwidth of your thought processes, your creative energy, your emotional bandwidth. It just starts to tank. And not only that, you might even be layering on self-judgment then about how you should have already made a decision, making the whole thing even more exhausting.
So then you're expending energy and don't forget time too, because if we think about how much time mental rumination takes up during the day, you're not getting anywhere, right? So you're taking the time and energy without moving forward. And decisions will just start to pile up on you. This is decision debt. And we're going to talk about how to get rid of this debt. But before we do that, what's really important to understand is why you might not be making a decision. We always want to start with awareness and understanding of ourselves because that's where we solve for the root issue.
A big reason you might not be making decisions is because of your identity. And this is coming from a fixed mindset and meaning it's just the way I am. And when I talk about identity, it's really just a belief you have about yourself. It is not fixed. It's fluid. It can evolve. But often we're going around talking about ourselves as if we just are the way we are, and that is immovable. So what this could sound like in this instance is just declaring, “I'm indecisive. I've always been indecisive. I can't make a decision.”
Let me tell you though, there is no decisiveness gene. You did not inherit this. Maybe it was modeled to you by someone in your life as a way of being, but you can become decisive. So if that is an identity that you possess, I highly, highly recommend you start to explore how that is not true. I guarantee there are places where you make decisions strongly and boldly. And you can start to shift this as something you are evolving into.
And the other thing that comes into play here sometimes is believing that you are a responsible person. Now, I like to be responsible in general. That's the thing I like about myself. I like to believe that about myself. But here's where it can get tricky. Sometimes there's a connection that we create for ourselves or we pick up from somewhere along the way, that responsible equals taking a really long time to think about things. We'll talk a little bit later about how to make considerations if that's something you want to do, if you don't want to just decide.
So you can absolutely do that. And you aren't more responsible the more you think about it. That's not true. So if you're believing “I'm responsible,” or “it's almost responsible to be indecisive,” I want you to consider that is false. And consider also that it is actually irresponsible to your business to drag out a decision. It truly does not serve you to take more time than necessary. Okay? So that's the first one.
Second reason we often don't make decisions, and this is so, so common with the types of clients I work with, is perfectionism. There is a fear of making a right or wrong decision. Now, right or wrong decision is directly related to perfectionism because when we are in a perfectionistic mindset, again, we're not going to identify as “I'm a perfectionist,” right? Because that again, doesn't exist. We don't have inherent perfectionism.
But we want to avoid someone seeing us as less than or seeing us as inadequate in any way, whether that's other people that we are perceiving to have those thoughts about ourselves or we have that judgment of ourselves, right? We don't want to be seen as wrong. So there's lots and lots of pressure that we have to make the right decision, and we must avoid a wrong decision at all costs. This is where it becomes a problem. Because there is a never-ending loop of what-ifs that you're going to end up trying to solve for. What if this happens? What if this? What if that? Right? There's always a possibility of it being a wrong decision because we don't ever truly know the outcome of what we've decided until it's done and in action, after the fact. Okay?
So there's no amount of overthinking that we can do that's going to prevent or guarantee an outcome. And if you accept this as truth, which I have absolutely seen that is true, then if we're waiting for guarantee of a right decision, we will be waiting forever. And that means more drawn-out decision making.
And a lot of times, too, one of the sneaky ways I'll see this is that clients will want to wait till the last minute to decide. And this is true of a lot of things with perfectionistic tendencies, is waiting till the last minute because you end up relying on being pushed up against some wall or deadline, whatever it is, to force you past your perfectionistic tendencies. There just becomes the point of, “this can't go on anymore, so now I have to decide,” versus proactively deciding ahead of time that you're going to make an empowered choice and move forward and go with it. And you'll figure out the rest as you go.
Another hiccup that causes a lot of delays in the decision-making process is lack of self-trust or self-leadership. So what this can look like is waiting for someone else to confirm your answer, your own internal answer about what you want to do or how you want to move forward. In some ways, this is a little bit similar to that perfectionism of we're looking to someone else to tell us what is right. So we want that sign of approval so that we can then trust ourselves, right? We're trusting somebody else more than we trust our own opinion and relying on somebody else to create that internal safety, which no one can actually give us that. We have to give that to ourselves.
And the other way this kind of shows up is we might know what we want to do or how we want to progress. And we're waiting for someone else to give us permission to do what we're being guided to do internally. Or we are withholding the permission from ourselves. You know, sometimes I'll see this where it's like, yes, absolutely, go do that. And that's coming from some sort of external source like maybe an accountant or CFO around, yes, you absolutely have the funds to do this. And then the designer is still not giving permission to oneself to move forward, right? Going back to that right, wrong decision.
Okay. So here's another one. We don't like to cut off options. That's what decision-making does. If you make a decision to go one way, you cut off, at least temporarily, other possibilities. And we like to do this because it makes us feel safe to have lots of doors open and feel like we could go in any possible direction at any time. Now, I gave a lot of bigger examples at the start of this episode about, you know, the decisions you might need to make in your business. But I even see this with prioritization, right? What am I going to do today? Or what am I going to do this week? Or which marketing channels am I going to prioritize? That would be slightly bigger, right?
But when we prioritize, we are making a decision, essentially. We're cutting off some options and pursuing others. Okay? Sometimes we mistakenly think that if we don't make a decision, we can have it all the ways. But what really happens is we don't have any ways. It's like trying to hike up multiple trails on a mountain at once. It does not work. You simply can't do it. So, coming to terms with there is a cutting off as a part of the decision-making process. That is what is supposed to happen versus believing it's something to be avoided.
Okay. Let's talk about the last reason I want to highlight here why you might not be making decisions. And that is because you have not decided to make the time for it, or you don't have a process for decision-making. And I'm going to share some of my process for decision-making. But a lot of what this boils down to is planning. Planning is decision-making.
One of the reasons why I am such a huge advocate of planning, whether that's on a daily, weekly, quarterly, and yearly scale, is that when you make decisions in advance, it's so much easier and efficient when it comes time to execute. You've done the mental labor of decision-making and so then you can just get to work. So sometimes we're thinking we really need to make this decision, but instead of deciding when we're going to prioritize that decision making, sitting down to think about what we need to think about, make plans, whatever it is, we're hoping it's just going to somehow resolve in the back of our brain as we run about our day. But for a lot of decisions, they are something that do require some consideration, and so we have to make time to decide and plan.
Part of this planning can be deciding what research or guidance you want to have completed. Then you can simply identify what you need or want to make the decision as part of your planning process. So this is, you know, getting more into planning, but even in your quarterly plan of deciding what projects you're working on and then the decisions you need to make about that project, the steps you need to take, all of that can go in your plan.
Before we dive into making moves to clear that decision debt, I want you to just pause and reflect and think about some of the ways that decision making gets put aside and the underlying issue that's really at play for why you've maybe procrastinated on or avoided a decision. Just take a moment and check in, and just see which one resonated. That's really, really good to know.
And now we're going to move into talking about making those decisions. How are you going to get out of the decision debt and keep it from accumulating in the future? The very first thing you're going to do is simply make a list of your unmade decisions, big and small. Essentially, when you start doing this brain dump, your decision debt is being put on paper so you can see it clearly and decide then how you're going to move forward. As I mentioned earlier, you can begin to put these decisions into your planning, and depending on the scope, it could be something that could be done today, it could be this week, maybe this quarter. But you really want to start to see what's been ruminating or looping in the back of your brain in full clarity.
One of the things you might even see with this is that you're thinking one decision to be made is actually many decisions all in one. And I highly suggest that you separate those out to make them more clear to you, less confusing, and potentially less overwhelming. This was actually something that I really noticed in myself when I've been doing some podcast planning recently. And I had noticed this sort of subtle sense of overwhelm. And it's quite rare that I have that like big, dramatic overwhelm that I used to experience long ago. For me, overwhelm is not this like frantic flinging about. You know, I'm I'm like picturing myself in a dizzy cloud or something. It's really this feeling of like my brain slowly shutting down and maybe being a little bit confused. So it's like a withdrawing from the task at hand, essentially.
That's more of the type of overwhelm that I feel now. But I noticed that was going on. And as I was doing some self-coaching in my weekly review, what I realized was that I was trying to make a future decision that actually hinged on a previous decision to be made. So I was thinking that I had one decision to be made, but actually there was a series of like mini decisions to make up that bigger decision. So it's like trying to complete step six of a puzzle when, you know, you need to come back and just do step one. So you might notice that when you are downloading all of those unmade decisions on your paper.
Once you have those decisions front and center, you're going to need to start making a decision about what you're going to do first. So make a strong decision, go all in, and allow yourself to see how this works. So you're going to start to clear the decks. And I recommend if this is something where you tend to get really hung up, pick something small that feels low stakes to start, because I really do want you to start to experience how freeing and light it can feel to make a decision.
And also in making your strong decisions from the list that you created, you could also just decide that some of the things you've been thinking you need to decide are actually going to be tabled for now. So, for an example of this, maybe you're going to be planning to switch project management software platforms this year, but you also know you don't really have capacity to dive into this research right now. So this is like a cutting off, like we talked about before. So your decision could be just to make note of this and know that it's a decision you're going to make, like which platform to go with in the future, and you're going to set it aside for now. That's the decision. And then revisit it next quarter. So you're deciding to set it off to the side, and then you're deciding when you will revisit that internal conversation.
So that's one example. Or maybe the decision is something really more broad, like you're sensing the vision for the company is expanding. But it's not an immediate decision or you have that internal knowing that it's not to be rushed right now, that it is something that is evolving and you need to let it marinate for a little bit. So you can decide you don't have to decide right now. Especially for something that can be more nuanced like this, it's really individualized and something, you know, where coaching can be so supportive. But it's also an opportunity to just check in with yourself. Am I avoiding this, or is it something that really does need to kind of settle into the background, and I can release the expectation of knowing right now?
Once you know what those decisions are and the one you're going to take action on deciding right away, if there is information or facts that you need to gather or a trusted opinion you want to go get, be explicit about what that looks like for you. I'll often hear clients say, “I need to think about it.” Okay. That's fine. But what does that mean? How will you know when you are ready to make a decision? Are you going to have some data, some numbers? Are you going to have researched a number of options? Is there somebody that you want to talk to about their personal experience with this? Just be very clear. I'm not ever saying you just need to decide and don't need to think about things or consider anything, right? But we don't want to have this like vague, “I need to think about it,” right? Because we could think about something for forever.
So, decide what it is you want to know or have in order to make the decision, and then give yourself a decision deadline. This is the date in which you will have made a decision and move on with your life. That's always the phrase that I use. I'm like, “I'm ready to move on with my life.” Now, decision deadlines can also be very helpful for your design project clients, but that's another topic for another day, but just, I'll plant that seed.
Okay. So then once you have the information that you want, you're going to enter into what I call the decision implementation cycle. Essentially, what this is that you make a decision, you implement the decision, and then you evaluate what happened. And this is the cycle that you continue in until you get your desired result. So, based on your evaluation, the decision you make, once it's implemented, something will happen. And you'll have data to draw on, you'll have experiences to reflect on. And then from your evaluation, you make a new decision, you implement that decision, and you gather new information.
When you're in the decision implementation cycle, you'll either arrive at your desired outcome in which you can complete that cycle or you'll have new information to inform your next steps. If you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you know how important I find evaluation. So if you are newer or need a refresher, definitely check out episode 122. It's called 3 Game-Changing Habits Every CEO Needs. That is a great introduction into evaluation and why it's so important. And of course, it is part of this decision implementation cycle.
The last thing is, I really want you to make an agreement with yourself that you will not be mean to yourself about a decision you've made. This is a key part of being willing to make decisions and make moves in your business. The first thing I want you to remember is that it's easy to judge your decisions way too early in the process. Going back to this idea of making good or bad or right or wrong decisions, sometimes we make decisions that lead to outcomes we didn't want or at least not what we wanted to happen. But I always want you to be keeping in mind that it's totally possible that quote unquote bad decision is just part of the process that's going to eventually lead to the end result you want. You thought the decision would lead to one thing or you thought it would take a certain amount of effort or action, and you were wrong. So then you just figure out what to do next in that decision implementation cycle.
I want you to notice the softness that I'm talking about that with. It's not a, “you messed up, you did this wrong, you've got to do it again.” Okay? It's just, “No, my guess was off. Let's figure out what I want to do next.” Now, the second thing is adopting the belief about yourself that you will figure it out. When you trust yourself to navigate the outcomes of your decisions, there's so much less to fear. One of the kindest, most supportive things you can do for yourself is to say, “I made the best decision I could with the information I had at the time.” And I really want you to think about how much more likely you'll be to keep moving forward and keep making decisions to move you closer to the interior design business you want if you didn't have to hide from your own criticism.
So those are the steps for getting out of and staying out of decision debt. I'm going to recap them, and then I've got just a little bit more I want to share. So the first one is to make a list of all of your unmade decisions, big and small. Then you're going to make a strong decision about which decision you're going to tackle first. If there is information or facts you need to gather, get crystal clear on what that is and when, and how you will be gathering that information so you can decide by a certain date. And then you're going to enter into the decision implementation cycle. And lastly, throughout this entire process, you're going to make an agreement with yourself that you will be kind about whatever happens.
Decision-making is simple. It's all of the mental baggage we bring with it that makes it so complicated. And when you get out of this decision debt, you really are going to move forward more quickly, and you build momentum. And you're freeing up your energy to solve for challenges, not just think about them. And of course, you're going to build a stronger relationship with yourself as the leader of your company because you know you can count on you to take action, adjust as needed, and keep going in pursuit of your goals.
And as we wrap up, I really want you to consider the impact of no longer using your energy to loop on the same unmade decisions over and over again. Wouldn't you rather make a decision, build on it and produce new results in your business? I think the answer would be yes. It is way more empowering to be in that driver's seat.
So I hope that you pick just one decision that's been following you around. Use what you've learned today and draw the line in the sand. And of course, I'd love to hear how you're using this concept. You can send me a message about the decision you made or how you're using this process. And in private coaching, I can help you make decisions that are best for your unique business while also helping you build the skills of decisiveness and self trust, which go hand in hand. If you're interested in working together one one-on-one, make sure you head over to desicreswell.com/coaching, and that is where you can learn all about my Design to Thrive private coaching partnerships and join the wait list.
I'll be back next week with a brand new episode as always. And in the meantime, I highly encourage you to listen to or revisit episode 124, Fear of Wasting Time, episode 122, Three Game Changing CEO Habits, and even go back to the beginning of the podcast, episode 22 where I talk about automated decisions, which is my process for making less decisions on these ongoing basis so that I have more bandwidth for the important stuff. And then of course, follow the show wherever you listen so you don't miss what's coming up. Until we talk again next Wednesday, I'm wishing you a beautiful week.
Thanks for joining me for this week's episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit DesiCreswell.com, where you’ll get immediate access to a variety of free resources to help you take what you learn on the podcast and put it into action. And if you love what you’re hearing, be sure to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I’ll talk to you next week.
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