Set a timer. Ninety seconds. One item.
Most indecision isn't really about the item — it's about an open-ended question with no deadline. "Should I keep this?" can occupy your mind for a day if you let it. It rarely needs more than ninety seconds if you don't.
Hold the object. Ask The One Question: does this help me become who I'm trying to become? Then decide — out loud if it helps — and move your hand before your mind has time to negotiate.
When a decision has no deadline, the mind treats it as open — something that can always be deferred in favor of more information, more certainty, more readiness. The item stays. Not because you've decided to keep it, but because you haven't decided anything. A timer changes that. It converts an open question into a bounded one. You're not deciding forever — you're deciding in the next ninety seconds.
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The timer isn't really about speed.
It's about removing the option to deliberate forever, which is usually just indecision wearing a thoughtful disguise.
When you finish, the "maybe" pile needs its own deadline — a specific date within two weeks by which every item gets a final decision. Items that return to the maybe pile a second time are almost certainly releases. The hesitation is emotional, not practical.
Some decisions deserve long consideration — an inherited item, something with real financial or sentimental weight. The 90-second method isn't for those. It's for the ordinary accumulation: things with no strong reason to stay and no strong reason to go, that simply sit.
Ninety seconds is enough time to be honest. It's rarely enough time to talk yourself out of being honest.