Why Big Decisions Need Spaciousness First
by Rentia Landman
There is a moment that comes before almost every big decision when we can feel ourselves starting to narrow things down. It can arrive quietly: a sense that it is time to stop exploring and start deciding. I want to make a case for being a little more intentional about when we allow that moment to arrive.
As we move closer to any significant decision, we naturally begin to contract. We start ruling things out, weighing options against one another and narrowing our focus towards a choice we can commit to. That contraction is necessary. Nobody can live in open-ended exploration forever. At some point, a decision has to be made.
But if the contraction starts too early, before there has been sufficient room to explore, we risk losing something important. We lose the opportunity to try things out, discover what we don't yet know about ourselves and test a direction before committing to it. Without exploration and experience, discernment can easily become little more than guessing, dressed up to look like a decision.
There is something quietly telling in the fact that 'quest' and 'question' share the same Latin root, quaerere, meaning to seek or search. A good question, held without rushing to close it, is already a form of exploration. But asking genuinely open questions requires a willingness to sit with not knowing, to remain curious and to resist steering ourselves towards an answer too soon.
When we begin to contract prematurely, our questions change. Instead of exploring what might be possible, we start looking for answers that confirm what we have already begun to decide. Spaciousness is, in part, simply having the room to keep asking, and wondering, for a little longer.
Mathis Ebner's TEDx talk, Use Procrastination to Choose Your Career, offers an interesting perspective on this. When he was struggling to decide what to study after school, he had already tried several conventional approaches, including talking to family and friends, completing an internship and undertaking a career assessment. None gave him a sufficiently satisfying answer.
Eventually, whenever he tried to confront the question, he found himself procrastinating. Rather than simply dismissing this as wasted time, he became curious about the ideas that emerged during those moments. He started recording them and noticed that his mind often wandered towards surprisingly productive ideas: problems he wanted to solve, games he wanted to develop and things he genuinely wanted to create. Recognising patterns in these ideas helped him make his academic choice. Today, he is studying Game Design at the Zurich University of the Arts and is happy with his decision.
What I find particularly interesting about his experience is not that procrastination is necessarily useful, but that he became curious about something he might otherwise have dismissed. By paying attention to what emerged when he wasn't deliberately trying to find an answer, he discovered something about himself that conventional career exploration hadn't revealed.
Sometimes we discover more about ourselves when we stop trying quite so hard to find the answer.
This matters particularly at decision points that carry real weight: choosing what to study, considering a career change, deciding whether to leave a job or navigating a new life stage. Deadlines, expectations and the discomfort of uncertainty can all make us want to arrive at an answer quickly. But rushing the exploration phase doesn't necessarily make a decision sounder; it simply makes it arrive sooner.
So what does exploring, rather than deciding, actually look like?
It doesn't need to be elaborate. It might mean spending time in different environments connected to the possibilities in front of you, having a conversation with someone who works in a field that interests you, or trying something small and relatively low-risk: attending a short course, undertaking a trial project or volunteering.
These experiences allow you to move beyond what you imagine a particular direction might be like and begin discovering what it actually means for you. They might reveal a sense of 'this fits', 'this interests me' or perhaps 'this really isn't for me'. All are valuable insights. None commits you to anything. That's precisely the point.
When thinking about careers, we sometimes approach decisions as though there is one right answer waiting to be discovered. But understanding ourselves, our interests, values, motivations and possibilities is an ongoing process. We don't always know what matters to us, or what might energise us, until we encounter it, experience it and reflect on what we discover.
Spaciousness isn't about avoiding a decision or endlessly keeping every possibility open. It is about allowing enough room for curiosity, experience and reflection before moving towards commitment.
If you're standing at the edge of a decision that matters and aren't yet sure which way to go, perhaps this is the moment to give that uncertainty a little more room rather than rushing to close it.
Sometimes what helps most isn't simply more information or another opinion, but an objective, capable and caring thinking partner. Someone who can hold the question alongside you, challenge your assumptions and create the space for you to explore without being hurried towards an answer.
Because the purpose of spaciousness isn't to avoid making a decision. It is to give yourself a better chance of making one that is genuinely informed, considered and your own.
Talk referenced: Use Procrastination to Choose Your Career, Mathis Ebner, TEDxYouth@Basel
