Making Decisions.

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Just out of interest as I am questioning everything, I often find myself spending ages trying to decide things. Like what to take if I go out in the car or what shoes to wear or if I am going out cycling, what bike to take. Is this an autism thing or is it something everyone does in life?
I am fine if I have one of something. (Except when I think "Will I need it?") Does anyone else get the same or is it just me?
I have known myself to want to go out cycling and couldn't decide which bicycle to take and not actually setting out!

My problem is that I am almost a hoarder but not quite as I will let things go if I decide I need the space and I have never used the thing in question and don't have a use for it. However, the things I like and enjoy become very personal to me and... Well. I will give an example of this. When I was in school and they did a fire drill I was always the only one to bring my bag with me. We were told not to bring anything, but I just could not leave it there. It was like it was more important somehow then getting out! That is very unusual for me as due to me not liking crowded places, I would normally be the first to want to get out of the claustrophobic corridors into the safety of the outside world!

Any thoughts anyone?

It's not unusual that I end up not eating because deciding what I want to eat takes so long that it's too late to be banging around in the kitchen or go out to buy something. I'm forever carrying a ruck-sack stuffed with clothes and other things that I'm very unlikely to need but can't leave behind because of the chance that I've misjudged the situation. When posting here, it can take me an hour to put together a couple of paragraphs due to endless editing and reconsidering how every phrase might be read by every possible reader (and quite often still end up scrapping them after all that.)

The amount that people procrastinate is very variable, but it is especially common for people with executive functioning differences, which are common for ASD or AD(H)D folks. I think for many of us, this is why we get very attached to routines and specific objects and places; they're an "autopilot" to spare us from our own procrastination.

Years ago when I was in a cycling club they used to call me "The Garage" because I would always bring tools with me incase the bicycle needed them.
Today when I go out I bring spares, and also spare clothes though I carefully limit what I bring as I could easily end up with a pair of panniers full. I don't know why but I tend to need an extra half an hour to an hour longer then others to get ready if I am going to work (When I had or have a job) compared to others.

I don't know if it applies to you, but I've read before that indecisiveness can be one of the lesser known symptoms of depression. When I was younger, I was a real pain when trying to decide on food in the cafeteria. I still get this "analysis paralysis" when I consider cleaning, but usually not as much.

I do have times when I feel a little low. Not sure if it is depression though.
Having said that, I don't think I get it only when I feel down. I seem to get it regardless.

Trogluddite mentioned routines. When I create and follow a routine, some of the decisions I have to make each day are "built in" to the routine so I spend less time wondering what to choose. Without my routines, I will slow down, fail to make decisions and procrastinate, and generally run into problems managing my life.

Maybe you could decide that on Mondays, you'll only ride your red bike, Tuesdays you'll only ride your blue bike, Wednesdays are only the silver bike, etc. Something like that.

I have a theory on this, based on something I read somewhere...

Apparently, the ability to make decisions is connected to our emotions. Neuroscientists have found that people who lose the ability to feel emotions have great difficulty making decisions. This is because, even when we think our decisions are based on analysis and logic, they are actually strongly weighted in a particular direction based on subconscious biases which have an emotional connection (or something like that, I forget the details).

My theory (which may be an autistic thing, or may just be me, I don't know) is that my emotions are usually dialled right down close to zero. This means I am trying to make decisions purely on analysis and logic. This is actually very difficult - it involves spending much longer weighing up the relevant factors (do my shoes match my outfit? are they comfortable enough? are they appropriate? which is more important - fashion or comfort? etc etc). It just slows down the process so much.

I'm much better at making decisions than I used to be, though. I think I've just learnt to attach less importance to whether a decision is right or wrong. (e.g. these shoes don't match my outfit, I might look weird, but who cares?) By allowing myself to make more "potentially wrong" decisions, the process gets a lot faster.

Just my 2c, anyway.

There are so many ways I could respond to this that I just can't decide.

@MrsPeel
Yes, I suspect you are onto something there. Many decisions in life are ambiguous enough that no amount of reasoning can arrive at a definite answer, and those are usually the ones that I struggle with the most. It seems that most people use their emotional "gut reaction" as a "tie breaker" in those situations, but I rarely have any "gut reaction" strong enough to tip my decision one way or another. This is particularly so for "social" decisions, where other people's desires and possible reactions need taking into account. I have strong Alexithymic traits, and I do think that this interacts with executive functioning problems to make decision making worse. I'm also very prone to ruminating about past decisions and conversations where I was unable to decide whether I took the most effective option - a very powerful drive to have a rational explanation for outcomes which, in practice, have too many unknown variables to ever be analysed completely.

I do not know if I comply to the above or not as in general I may be a little too emotional but maybe in certain areas. For example, I am ever so sorry when I accidently stand or squash an insect. With people it is a mix between not showing the emotions I need (Which really may have stemmed from my "Numb" years) or being overboard in that I feel too much for other people so I need to distance myself a little to survive. (I try not to cry these days as I have over the last few years had throat closing issues now and then. (My sholders go up and my throat closes which I think is stress related, and if I cry my nose starts to block so you can imagine the difficulties I have to breathe, so I have trained myself not to cry. I am an adult so I should not be so emotional anyway).

*Numb years... From about 2007 for a couple of years after we had so many people die on us that I became numb. Then after 43 funerals were counted I couldn't face another funeral. All natural deaths and all at different times within a few years. Some were quite close like my dad, six days after a neighbour, then grandmother, and all my aunts and uncles, and a great many friends of my parents. It was surreal.

If I'm indecisive, it is usually because I'm not fully awake, or I've got too much of my head working on a long-term puzzle.