Have you ever been in a situation where you have multiple options in front of you, but instead of choosing one — focusing only on that one and setting the others aside — you tried to do them all, and in the end, all of them suffered?
In his book, Essentialism, Greg McKeown uses the term “straddling” to describe this posture of being stuck in-between. We straddle the decision, with one foot going this way and one foot going the other way. And because of this, we never get too far in either direction.
I know I’ve experienced this in my life. There are different options, different possibilities, and out of a fear of missing out on one, I end up trying to do a little of them all. But in so doing, I also don’t fully invest into any of them. And so there’s a lack of focus, which in turn dilutes the ultimate quality of what gets done.
But why do we straddle?
Some of it, I think, comes down to the cause of many of our problems in life: fear. In this case, there could be a fear of loss. What if I stop doing this one thing, and then later, wish I would have kept at it? Or what if I give up what I know I have, only to find that the thing I chose didn’t actually turn out to be better?
Now, there’s certainly value in weighing options, and not being rash about making decisions. Because decisions have consequences. What you embrace, or what you give up, will affect what you experience tomorrow. So it pays to be thoughtful about how you handle the decisions of today.
But there comes a point where not making a decision to engage fully with one choice or the other doesn’t help you make a better decision. It just dilutes your focus, and thus your effectiveness, until that moment when you finally decide which direction to take.