Don't Dither - by Sarah Constantin - Rough Diamonds
Rough Diamonds
SubscribeSign in
Don't Dither<br>advice for The Youths
Sarah Constantin<br>Aug 04, 2026
Share
Dithering is also an image processing technique<br>Several times now, I have listened to someone, usually younger than me, debating a big decision, and (explicitly or implicitly), looking for advice, in a certain way that follows a pattern.<br>In the prototypical case, this is a pretty normal kind of decision that people make all the time — whether to quit a job, get married, move to a new city, start a company, have a kid, etc. A major life change, but not a super unusual or inherently questionable proposition.<br>And again, in conversations that fit this pattern, what I notice is that everything the person expresses indicates they want to make this change. They only say positive things about it. They seem eager and hopeful. They give reasons in favor of doing it, and reasons against not doing it.<br>But they have not, themselves, noticed that they want to do it. They haven’t picked up on what they sound like from the outside, which is blazingly obvious even to someone who’s just met them.<br>So, pretty much every time, I say “Sounds like you really want to do this! You should go for it!”<br>And then they’re often like “but I’m not suuuuure.” And I have to kind of egg them on and tell them they should totally do the thing.<br>Why do I do this?<br>The thing is, I’m not a fortune-teller. I actually have no idea, objectively, if some person I’ve never met would make a good spouse for you. Or if quitting your job will work out well for you. In a few cases I have experience in a loosely analogous situation that I’m drawing from, but mostly I’m clueless. You know way more about your own life than I do. I only have one piece of information that you don’t — how you look and sound to me, as we’re having this conversation.<br>And, in a fair number of cases, you guys look and sound like you really want to do a thing, and are just hesitating for no good reason that you can think of.<br>This is dithering.<br>It’s not really doubt. If you seriously doubted whether this was a good decision, you’d be looking for information that could go either way. You’d be interested in learning how it might go wrong, or you might be weighing reasons to do the thing against reasons not to do it.<br>But often that’s not what I see. I see someone give a list of plausible reasons in favor of doing the thing, and a visible pull towards doing the thing, and there’s literally nothing pointing in the opposite direction. I guess they’re just looking for permission to do it, or seeking validation, or waiting for a sign for the universe that it’s time. There are no actual obstacles! They just don’t feel “sure” yet.<br>And dithering looks quite unattractive from the outside. It’s almost an irresistible compulsion to try to get someone over this hesitant phase, this mode where they’re obviously restraining themselves from what is obviously their natural impulse, and get them to Make A Decision Already.<br>You want to do the thing. You think doing the thing is the right move. I can’t promise you that you’re right! But I do have a sort of faith that people can’t, in practice, do much better than following their own integrated judgment and desire.<br>To put it more superstitiously, even if it is a bad move, it’s a bad move that you kind of “have to make”. It’s a necessary part of how your life must unfold, given that you are you.<br>And to put it less superstitiously, it’s important for development, learning, human flourishing, all that stuff, to move forward with your life, to take on the “natural” next challenge or opportunity that “advances the plot” and will require you to learn and change. You are not going to get out of life 100% unscathed; nobody is wholly untouched by regret or adversity. So you might as well make the decision you want to make.<br>In particular, I far more often see young people underrate experimentation than overrate it. And this makes sense; if you’ve had very few life experiences thus far, it’s easy to imagine “this is basically How The World Is; if I make a change in my life it probably won’t get any better than this.” Whereas actually, you have tried almost nothing yet and anything you’re dissatisfied with is probably fixable if you change something about the basic conditions of your life. (Like: where you live, what you work on, what your daily routine is like, who your close relationships are with, what medical interventions you’ve tried, etc.) I don’t want to downplay adversity that’s beyond people’s control, but in my observation “if you’re unhappy, make a change, no really, actually switch up what you’re doing and try something you’ve never tried before” isn’t just good advice for people with charmed lives — it can also work out well for people who have quite genuine problems.<br>Now, while I do genuinely think “don’t dither” is good advice, it’s admittedly a bit contaminated by the self-interest of the...