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Part of the importance to adhering to the 80/20 rule and repeatedly moving inbound tasks into ’someday’ and ‘never’.To take advantage of ‘out of sight- out of mind’.

Information overload (including task overload) can contain paradoxically any or all of these simultaneously.

Possibility paralysis occurs

• when the number of options being evaluated exceeds conscious ability to bring closure.
• when the options being evaluated have strong bipolarness (for every kiss you’ll get a punch in the face)
• when the options being evaluated have like weighted, (like trying to decide where to eat when you’re not hungry)

Frequently for me I can see myself ’spinning’, if introduced rapidly I’ve seen others lockup. The internal engine is moving fast so fast it takes on top like aspects where the it stands almost perfectly still. It’s a bit like eating a whale with a spoon, the brain is turning the puzzle every which way, looking for an least cost solution…yet not finding one, so it puts down everything down than tries it again, frequently forgetting where it started.

We can see a simliar thing in computers where we run out of RAM, and large files are being constantly paged to disk. Imagine trying to make sense of this post, if you could only read 7 letters at a time…

Perfection Paralysis is the repeated attempt to find an 95-100% optimal solution to the point of it becoming ludicrous. When suboptimal (say 80% good) may be all that’s possible. Some examples:

• a winning game move (e.g. chess, vectoids), where short term losses/sacrifices (maybe even 20%) are necessary for long term victory. This is especially visible in iteractives, and creative endeavors by definition often exploring resulting in 30%-93% unfruitful path.
• diminishing returns: mastering real world Tetris, packing everything into one container, when 2 trips or a container 1.5-2x box would be cheaper especially considering time.
• Scheduling conflicts, trying to get everyone to the meeting, flying them in from mars, when either another meeting, recording/relaying information, or just not having them come might be equally viable options.

Priority Paralysis is the when everything is a priority one.  Frequently appearing as stagnation despite business. Especially visible in startups where everyday is a forest fire after forest fire, and no time/money is allocated on how to address the scaling. In people the priority towards basic survival can end with childhood abuse push out growing up and self actualization till much later in life.

Deadlock Paraylsis  when two things are dependent on each other, and in a holding pattern, frequently because there hasn’t been coordination. This frequently shows up in teams when one person is waiting on another person for something they need to complete, and the other ironically may be doing the same thing, each assuming that the other knows.. This happens in increasing frequency as people get busier and lack time to sync, despite when not busy working just fine. This is where project managers or task managers can help break the gordian knot, when

SOLUTIONS
As for solving them.

• Break Ties and Conflicts: Using spreadsheets to help break value conflicts, and value ties. This is a focus exercise, write the title of what your trying to solve, then divide the page into 2 columns for pros and cons. Give yourself 1 minute to list all the pros you can think of, then cover up that column and give yourself 1 minute to list all the cons you can think of. Then another minute to assign points to the pros (1-10) and another for assigning points to the cons. Then add them up. Choose the one that has more points. Sometimes elements will need a second pass as they have their own pros/cons.
• Scenario plan: Aggressively writing down all the possible options, to eliminate the mental re-rehearsing paging effect, sometimes getting everything out can take days. This can often lead to many refactorings as scenarios overlap in a grid like fashion with others scenarios. Using a word processor it’s okay to duplicate! just copy and paste.
• Triage 80/20 Go through the list of uncategorized and now, and someday and ask “can this wait 1 month?”. If so then move it to the ‘later’ someday bin. The goal here is to get them out of sight and and out of mind. Get the list down to 3-7 items, which is all you can consciously focus on with any intensity. If it’s larger than that, assign points of importance, then move anything not above the 80% cut into the soon or someday.
• Timetrack and use a task timer. Especially on writing/architecting projects and purchases I find that the amount of time I spend optimizing can easily overshadow the worth/cost of the item. Say I spend 4 hours researching and finding the best deal, saving me $100, when I found a $50 off retail in about 15 minutes..given an hourly rate of $50, I have actually lost $100 relative to spending that time working, and the opportunity costs are even larger given most work projects tend to pay back.