Still Deciding
Not all decisions are created equal
When late January rolls around, most people have already forgotten about their New Year’s Resolutions.
But you haven’t forgotten. You remember the goal, the hours spent crafting the perfect system for change, and the surge of clarity when everything falls into place.
Then weeks passed by. The plan sat untouched. The excitement faded. And you’re left wondering where the time has gone and how we’re already 7% through 2026.
Last week, I read something from Alen Sultanic that put this into perspective:
“There are decisions, and then there are real decisions. All decisions are made with behavior rather than in thinking of the behavior. If you’re still ‘thinking’ about it, you haven’t decided. No matter how often you say ‘you’ve decided,’ until you’ve done it, you haven’t decided. You haven’t made a real decision because the only time something is real is when you act on it. The only time you decide is when you do it, behavior.”
I read it over and over, scribbled it down into my notebook, and haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
This idea shines the light on something we don’t want to admit: we mistake decisions for the work.
Beyond just New Year’s goals, it pains me to think of all the times I’ve made a decision and done nothing about it. And it’s clear looking back how decisions create a false sense of control. Recognizing the problem feels like an enormous first step. But it isn’t. It’s still just thinking.
A decision is an abstract thought, and our thoughts can take us in endless directions, from refining plans, adjusting timelines, and reading one more article to waiting just one more day to get started. It feels secure, and borderline productive because you’ve “decided” to work on something.
In many ways, it’s easier to claim you solved a problem than to actually solve it.
That’s the gap between decisions that stay decisions, and decisions that become real.
This pattern shows up everywhere once you notice it. People caught up in the gap between knowing and doing — knowing what needs to be done, yet going weeks and doing nothing about it.
Time passes either way, and a year from now, you’ll either have done the thing or still deciding to do it. What I know for certain is that the perfect moment, the clearest iteration of your plan, and that sense of readiness will never come.
Real decisions happen when you stop thinking about the behavior and just do the behavior.
That’s it.
That’s the only decision that matters.
Talk soon,
Pranav
