Simplify the Question
What's the real question here?
Write the decision you're facing as a messy brain-dump. Then rewrite it as one clear sentence with no jargon, no qualifiers, and no commas. If you can't, the problem isn't the answer — it's the question.
You're spinning in analysis, drowning in detail, or a group discussion has gone circular.
The problem is already precisely defined and further simplification would strip essential nuance.
Why it works
Vague questions produce vague answers — a clean sentence forces you to identify the decision underneath.
Your working memory can only juggle a few concepts at once. A bloated, qualified question overwhelms it before you even start thinking about answers. The first draft of your question reveals what you think you’re deciding. The simplified rewrite reveals what you’re actually deciding — and those are often different questions entirely. If you can’t compress the decision into one clean sentence, that’s diagnostic: the problem isn’t that you lack an answer, it’s that you haven’t found the real question yet.