You keep asking everyone for advice before you decide, and it never settles it

Four yeses, one maybe and a question about money

It is Thursday night, phone in hand. You have been with your partner for two years. Last week he asked if you would like to move in together when your lease ends in March.

Since then you have asked your best friend, your sister, your mom and two people at work. You screenshotted his text and sent it to a group chat.

Four people said go for it. One said "only if you're sure." Your mom asked who would pay for what. Now you are writing to a college roommate you have not talked to in a year.

Part of you already knows the next reply will not settle it. Stopping still feels risky, as if the answer that ends all doubt is waiting in the next message.

Advice works, so that is not the problem

We want to be clear about this, because "stop asking people" is lazy advice. Asking is one of the best decision tools there is.

In a 2004 set of studies by Ilan Yaniv, people made a judgment, heard an adviser and made a final call. They gave their own view more weight than the adviser's. Even so, using advice made them more accurate. In plain words, people listen to advice less than they should, and still do better for having heard it.

So the book gives you permission to ask. The question is what you are asking for.

Why a bigger poll gives you less certainty

Notice what those studies are about. Someone asks to get information, takes it in and decides. That is not what happens at 11 p.m. with a screenshot.

The second kind of asking wants someone to say "it will be fine" with enough force that the worry stops. Then it comes back, and you ask again.

Research by David Budescu and colleagues found that confidence in a set of opinions drops as the opinions spread out. A 2007 study by Budescu and Yu found that one of the best predictors of a decision maker's confidence was how much the advisers agreed.

Now look at the group chat again. Four yeses, one "only if you're sure," one money question. That spread is normal. If what you want from the poll is certainty, a spread like that will never deliver it.

There is a quiet cost too. A 2008 review by Starr and Davila pooled 38 studies and found that excessive reassurance seeking went with low mood, and more weakly with being rejected by others. Those are links, mostly measured at one point in time. They do not show that asking causes low mood, and the book makes no clinical claim. The practical point is smaller: asking the same question again can wear on the people who love you.

Information or permission?

Look at the questions you have been sending. Information questions sound like this:

• "What did you wish you had known before you moved in with someone?"
• "How did you two split rent and bills?"
• "What do you see in us that might be missing from the picture?"

Permission questions sound like this:

• "Do you think it's a good idea?"
• "Would you do it?"

People who have been there can answer the first kind, and their answers give you something new to weigh. Only you can answer the second kind. Each person who tries is guessing at your life from the outside.

Audit the advice in ten minutes

The book's Advice Audit carries a STORY ONLY badge. It has never been tested. It is a sorting job you can do with your recent messages.

1. List everyone you asked about this decision, with a few words on what each said.
2. Mark each name NEW if they gave you new information, like a fact, an experience or a question you had not thought of. Mark it R if they mostly gave reassurance or a vote.
3. Count the R's. If the last two people added nothing new, the polling is over.
4. Write the one or two pieces of information that actually changed how you see the choice.
5. Write the question you were really hoping someone would answer. It is often "Tell me this won't go wrong." Nobody can answer that for you.
6. Decide who, if anyone, still has a fact you need. Ask that person one specific question, then stop.

Be the friend you would have asked

Here is the odd part. You probably give clear advice to other people all the time. In the book, a reader is stuck for six weeks on whether a widowed dad should move into the spare room. Then a coworker says her mother-in-law might move in, and the reader has advice for her in ten seconds. Talk to your husband. Try a month before anyone sells anything. Set ground rules while everyone is calm.

That gap has been studied. In three experiments with 693 people, Igor Grossmann and Ethan Kross found people reasoned more wisely about a friend's relationship conflict than their own. When people pictured their own problem from an outside observer's seat, the gap closed. Older adults were no wiser about their own lives than younger ones. Stepping back helped both.

The book turns this into Advise a Friend (PROMISING). Picture a real friend with your exact problem. Write their situation using their name, then write what you would tell them. Check four things: did you admit what they cannot know yet, suggest a middle path, say that things might change and think about the other people involved? Then read it back as if it were written to you.

Ask once, ask well, then decide

If the audit shows you have been polling, the fix is not to ask nobody. It is to ask one person well. The book's One Trusted Voice card (STORY ONLY) has you pick someone who knows the area, knows you and has told you hard things before. Ask what you might be missing, not whether you should do it. Listen without arguing, write down the one point that surprised you, and tell them your decision date before you hang up.

You can still tell everyone else what you decide. Sharing news is not the same as asking for a vote.

Where Done Deciding takes it from here

This is the problem Done Deciding was written for.

Stop Polling Everyone: Ask Well, Ask Once, Then Decide has the Advice Audit, One Trusted Voice and the full research on advice and agreement.

Get Out of Your Own Head: Give Yourself the Advice You'd Give a Friend has Advise a Friend and a three-minute card for talking to yourself by name when the loop gets loud.

If the asking is really about fear, start with our page on being afraid of making the wrong decision.