I know some very smart people who, when faced with a choice, didn't choose, and now find themselves somewhat rudderless, in their early 30s, still not knowing what to do and surprised at how late in the day it's gotten.
Making a choice doesn't usually preclude you from changing direction if you find, after investing your time and effort, that it's not working out. But delaying all choice is very rarely the right option. There's no good reason to think that time spent choosing will increase your feeling of certainty in what you choose.
There's a couple of rules that I have been following, more or less consciously, for the past few years:
1) Seek advice from people you respect.
2) Don't let fear take your decisions for you: Will you regret (not) doing this?
3) If you're thinking about taking a risk: How bad is the worst-case scenario, and how likely is it? Even if it's bad: Would it be worse not to have tried?
4) Think through your options carefully, but recognize that for many decisions, you will never reach absolute certainty. Learn to live with the concept of sufficient certainty.
5) Take a decision and run with it. Don't keep second-guessing yourself. Learn from your mistakes, but don't beat yourself up about them, especially if they were only evident in hindsight.
And a corollary to that: it's better to make a decision and start moving, even if it's the wrong decision than to do nothing. Just make sure you reevaluate if it's still the right decision and have the ability to change course (iterate). I've heard both Jeff Bezos and Tom Bilyeu espouse this.
If the decision is irrevocable (e.g. getting married), then obviously more care is warranted and doing nothing might be better until you're more certain.
It's usually better to make a bad decision than no decision at all.
Really the internet makes it too easy to have too much choice by making it easy to consume so much shallow information, and the real value comes from cutting through the noise.
Consider exploring interests serially rather than in parallel and going deep for a few months on 1 topic whether that seems the best or not.
You can apply this reasoning to any decision you want to make and talk yourself out of it immediately. But even then at the end of the day you have to make a decision. Why not back yourself to succeed and commit to it for a while. You can always change course later on. Life is all about experiences and learning from ones mistakes. Good luck to you.
Take a decision. If that turned out to be a good decision, think back and remember how you took that decision. If it turned out to be a bad decision, remember how you took that decision. Learn from your mistakes and soon you will be an expert decision maker.
It’s hard to give inputs when there is little information about the why.
I vote get the degree. It gives you more options.
If you choose not to: Go out with a drive to succeed and enjoy the fact that life is about choosing and learning.
At its naked core there is no good or bad decision. What makes a decision good or bad is how you deal with the consequences.
If you nail the why (prior to choosing) you can do the most radical things with the most drastic consequences but still feel safe within yourself that this was the best of many paths to unfold.
A good life lesson in general. My version of it: "most of the most important decisions you make in life will be made in the basis of insufficient information."
As programmers we may be used to the notion that we can optimize if we know enough. We often can't. Decisions won't get better with more information because it's still insufficient. All you can do is use your best judgment -- of when to use your best judgment. And live with the consequences.
That doesn't help you make the decision. But it can help you avoid spending too much time kicking yourself over it.
Lesson #1: Trust yourself to make the right decision to move you forward.
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