I've been thinking a lot about the decision making process.

When told I am engaging in "Black or White" thinking, and need to "introduce some more Grey", I very often recoil as if in horror. I think I know now why this is.

I think the "fatal hesitation" I am often prone to, and the unease at hearing "shades of grey" are due to the fact that I already see the world in terms of shades of grey! I always look at both points of view, all the outcomes, all the possible variables when making any decision. This takes time; sometimes an excessive amount of it. Why do I do this? Because I am driven by a very deep desire to find the most effective, ethically pleasing and efficient course of action. I seem to have a profound, innate dislike of wasted time and energy, lost opportunities and needless, harmful mistakes, whether those affect me or other people.

I often have to resort to Black or White thinking to "increase the amplitude" between relative courses of thought and anticipated action (and I suspect that's exactly what happens on the neuron level - like boosting the signal strength of two radio stations so I can hear both more clearly) until the "shade of grey" reaches a sort of critical level where the right action becomes suddenly obvious (eventually, lol!). "Eureka, that's it!!"

Another thing I've noticed about myself is I am very, very non-compartmentalized - there is an awful lot of metadata floating around in my head - everything in life seems to "connect" to everything else, everything "means something". I have a metaphorical, poetic brain that inadvertently slows itself down by sprouting thought, feeling and sensory associations between things to a massive degree. This has its advantages, but ALL my thinking is "deep", which leads to problems all its own. I can't multitask, "switch gears" or "think on my feet" very effectively, but give me some quiet reflection time and I can come up with something useful. Also, my intuition seems to operate very well (except when I am stressed, then it is worse than useless) and I do well with creative work and synthesizing information. Give me a complex problem to chew on and I am in my element; yet often the most stupidly obvious things escape me. I seem to be the Bohemian Artist/Scholar type who forgets to tie his own shoelaces half the time.

I can see the merits in this way of thinking: no unpleasant surprises (except for the untied shoelace type moments); all the variables properly analyzed and fully cross-referenced. Anyway, it just deeply "feels right", it's my hardwired and learned way of doing things. But how do I make faster and more effective choices, without wearing myself out or grinding to a halt?

(1) Be extremely clear about the desired outcome (using my visualization and imagination skills seem to work very well here).
(2) Keep in mind the personal boundaries involved (my own and others), and don't let them become too flexible or too rigid.
(3) Reduce my innate tendency to pay excessive attention to negative information - watch out for excessively fear-based patterns of thinking (I am very susceptible to those, and they can be extremely subtle).
(4) Watch out for thinking errors (like catastrophizing and generalizing). I think the more metaphorical your thinking is, the worse this can get, because your default approach is to use information to guess what's going to happen next and imagine consequences you can't see at this moment. Metadata "fills in the blanks". A vital tool, absolutely, but what happens when it simply jumps to the wrong conclusion?
(5) Stop overusing the connections between what you know - stop abusing the metaphorical brain. TAKE MORE ACTION! Test the waters more. Challenge that "need" to feel 100% secure about the smaller decisions. This gives the brain more experiential information to integrate, which should lead to better decisions when it comes time for the Big Stuff. More direct experience = more chance of mistakes, but also more accurate metaphors! (This implies restoring balance between Neuroticism, Openness and Extraversion personality traits).
(6) Practice calming and centering exercises regularly (anxiety reduction)
(7) Avoid using an excessive amount of sustained "left-brained, analytical thinking" ... for some reason this leads to useless rumination very quickly, except when I restrict this approach to "short bursts".
Dammitt Jim, I'm a poet, not an engineer!

Think back to my neuron-as-radio station metaphor - what I'm doing is reducing "signal noise" and "interference" by deliberately modifying my patterns of thinking. I am also giving this cross-referenced brain clearer instructions on what data I need pulled up and when. I don't need half the library when I am just looking for a single book, but I also want it to be the right book for me.

I am going to try this and see what happens. Does anyone else notice themselves operating this way? I hope this post gets you thinking (but not too much ).