The Decision You Keep Not Making
Why high-performing leaders defer the moves that would actually change things
The Lens
You know what it is. You’ve known for a while.
It surfaces on Sunday evenings. In the gaps between calls. In the moment just before sleep when the noise quiets and there’s nothing left to distract you from it.
You haven’t made it yet. Not because you can’t. Not because you don’t have enough information — you probably have more than enough. But every week something more urgent arrives, and the decision gets pushed to next week, and next week becomes the week after that, and at some point the deferral stops feeling like a delay and starts feeling like a decision of its own.
This is one of the patterns that rarely gets named in leadership conversations, because it doesn’t look like a problem from the outside. You’re still executing. Still delivering. Still moving. The decision just isn’t moving with you.
What makes it different from ordinary procrastination is that it’s usually about something real. Not a task, not an item on a list — but a move that would actually change your situation. A structural change. A conversation that needs to happen. A commitment you’ve been circling without landing.
And high-performing leaders are particularly susceptible to this pattern, because they’re good at generating reasons. The timing isn’t right. The team needs stability. There are too many variables. All of those things might be true. They might also be the story that keeps the decision at a comfortable distance.
“At some point the deferral stops feeling like a delay and starts feeling like a decision of its own.”
What I’ve observed in leaders who finally make the move they’d been deferring: the circumstances almost never changed. The timing didn’t get cleaner. The variables didn’t resolve. At some point they simply decided that waiting for ideal conditions was its own kind of cost — and that the cost had gotten high enough.
The decision you keep not making isn’t waiting for permission from the environment. The environment is not going to give it to you.
What I'm Sitting With
There’s a difference between a decision that genuinely needs more time and one that’s gotten comfortable being deferred.
The tell, in my experience, is whether more information would actually change anything. If the answer is no — if you already know what you’d do if you were being honest with yourself — then what you’re managing isn’t uncertainty. It’s resistance. And those require entirely different responses.
The leaders who move through this don’t wait for motivation. They make the decision first. The clarity tends to follow.
What I'd Tell a Friend
🗒️ Try this once this week: Write the deferred decision in one sentence — out loud or on paper. Not the context, not the options. Just the decision itself. Notice what happens when it's no longer living only in your head.
🛠️ If you're a leader whose calendar is full of other people's deferred decisions, try the 1-3-1 rule. When someone brings you a problem, ask three questions: What is the one problem we're solving? What are three viable options? Which do you recommend and why? It stops you from becoming the bottleneck — and frees up the space to make the moves that are actually yours to make.
If this resonated, forward it to a leader who needed to read it today. And if you want to — hit reply and tell me where you feel this most. I read every response.
For those sitting with this and wondering what it looks like to actually address this within yourself or organization — I'd love to start that conversation. Hit reply or find me at raikhamisa.com.
— Rai
Rai Khamisa is a licensed mental health clinician and administrative leader writing at the intersection of mental health, leadership, and culture. This newsletter is for people ready to lead and live differently.
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