The Paralysis Of Choice.

Photo by LARAM on Unsplash

Sometimes I just sit and stare at the screen. Not out of boredom, but because I don’t know what to click. There are a hundred tabs open in my head, and none of them feel like the one I truly want. Or maybe they all do, and that’s the problem.

We live in the most extraordinary time to be alive. Everything is here. Everything is possible. With a swipe, a scroll, or a search, I can learn a new language, change careers, build a company, write a book, record a song, or escape into another world. I can be anything. 
So why do I so often feel like I’m nothing?

The world is screaming with opportunities, and yet I freeze. Not because I’m lazy. Not because I don’t want it. But because I want too much. I want to write, to build, to create, to explore. I want to be present and also wildly ambitious. I want depth. I want variety. And I want to feel like I’m moving forward, but sometimes all I do is circle around the question,
What should I do next?”

I’ve achieved things before. I’ve finished projects, learned skills, and even surprised myself. But now, the next thing doesn’t feel obvious. It feels heavy. Like a door I can’t open without shutting a hundred others.

And now, we have machines. AI doing things faster than I can imagine, drawing, coding, writing, and thinking. Better than the average person. Maybe even better than me. The bar just got higher. And I find myself wondering if the time I spent learning something was already wasted. It makes every new decision feel urgent. And overwhelming. As if I have to be a master at many things just to stand still.

Some days I want to chase everything. On other days, I want to hide from all of it. Because every choice feels like a risk. The risk of being wrong. Of wasting time. Of finding out I’m not good enough.

But maybe that’s the trap. The belief that there’s a right choice. That if I just picked the perfect thing, everything else would fall into place. 
But what if there’s no perfect? 
What if most things only make sense after you begin?

And what if beginning doesn’t feel heroic at all? What if it feels like dragging yourself through mud while everyone else seems to be sprinting on pavement? You start something, only to question it a week later. You switch paths, only to look back and wonder what might’ve happened if you’d just stayed. It’s not clarity, but constant churn. And maybe that’s the point nobody talks about. That most of us are building something out of confusion, not certainty.

You finish a thing, and there’s no applause. No inner peace. Just more questions. More options. You open Netflix and scroll past 200 shows just to rewatch the same comfort series again. Not because you’re uninspired, but because committing feels like surrendering a thousand other selves you could have been.

Photo by Razvan Cristea on Unsplash

There are days when I romanticise becoming someone else entirely. Moving to a remote village. Making coffee for strangers. Leaving behind all ambitions that once felt urgent. Not because I hate my life, but because the weight of too many futures makes the present hard to touch.

Sometimes I wonder, what if we were designed for fewer choices? What if we were meant to be villagers, blacksmiths, farmers, with destinies tied to place and time? Not endless tabs. Not infinite feeds. Just one life. Lived deeply.

But here we are, alive in a time where you can be everything and nothing at once. Where success is so visible and yet so intangible. Where being “multi-talented” often just means “chronically unsure.”

And yet. In the middle of all this noise, sometimes I catch something small. An ephemeral moment of flow. A piece of music I made. A paragraph I wrote that feels like it came from a truer place. A conversation where I was fully present. These aren’t victories. They’re breadcrumbs. Proof that even in this swirling storm of choices, something real can still be made.

Maybe the answer isn’t in choosing the perfect path, but in making a choice and letting it scar you a little. Letting it teach you something you couldn’t have known from the outside.

Because the world might reward masters. But it needs wanderers too. People who explore without maps. People who choose, not because it’s the most efficient move, but because something inside them stirs.

Photo by Matt Hardy on Unsplash

So no.
I don’t have the answer. But maybe that’s not a failure. Maybe I’m still searching. Still alive. Still trying, when it would be so easy to stop.

And if that’s where you are, too — floating in this sea of maybes — then maybe all we need to do is swim in one direction long enough to see where it takes us.

Not forever. 
Just for now.

Just long enough to feel the water shift beneath us.
To feel our own movement again.


CtrlAltGrow is my passion project to bring to life all the little creativity I have in my head. All my work, the podcast & my blogs, will be part of this library of thoughts.

If you enjoy my content and want to show support, you can check out my podcast, buy me a coffee or drop a message & say Hi!

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Substack — https://substack.com/@ctrlaltgrow

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Email — harsh@ctrlaltgrow.com

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Harsh Patel
Harsh Patel

A 24-year-old who runs a podcast that is heard across 52 countries. I live two identities - an engineer when the sun shines and a content creator when the stars align. I take life, one day, one step at a time. Join me in my journey as I continue to explore everything that life has to offer.

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