decidere, to cut away
Decide
A decision is a removal, not an addition. Until something is being cut off, nothing has actually been decided.
What is decide?
A decision is a removal. The Latin decidere means to cut away, the same root as homicide and incision, and the word is telling you what the act is: choosing one path is the act of killing the others. Until something is being cut off, nothing has actually been decided.
Why it works
This is why the choices that feel hardest are almost never the ones with the least information. They are the ones where you are still trying to keep everything. The discomfort you read as uncertainty is usually grief about the option you are about to lose, and no amount of extra research will resolve it, because research is not what is missing.
How to use it
You have two job offers and you have been comparing them for three weeks. Stop comparing. Ask instead what each one costs you, name the thing you would be cutting away in each case, and notice which loss you can actually live with. The answer usually arrives fast once the question stops being which is better.
What proving it looks like
"Turned down the role with the commute. Wrote down what I was giving up so I would not relitigate it at 2am. 14 Mar."
Where this lands
A decision made this way lands on your line as a moment with a direction, because you can say what it cost.
This is one of the ideas inside Character Arc. See where it lands on your own line.