There are only 3 types of decisions: a hat, a haircut and a tattoo. But there's a catch.

If you want to support independent women's media, become a Mamamia subscriber . Get an all-access pass to everything we make, including exclusive podcasts, articles, videos and our exercise app, MOVE.

Every day, we're bombarded with choices. What to eat for breakfast. Whether to accept that job offer. If we should move cities. Whether to go on a second date with someone.

Some decisions feel weightless; others feel like they could alter the entire trajectory of our lives.

But what if there was a simple framework to help us determine which decisions deserve our careful deliberation and which ones we're overthinking?

James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, believes he's found it. In a note that has since sparked widespread discussion, Clear proposed that virtually all decisions fall into just three categories: hats, haircuts, or tattoos.

Watch: Is 'chatfishing' the new AI dating trend? Post continues below.

The framework.

According to Clear, most of our decisions are like hats: easy to try on, easy to take off. "The cost of a mistake is low, so move quickly and try a bunch of hats," he shared.

These are your low-stakes choices, the ones where experimentation costs you almost nothing.

Then there are haircut decisions. You can recover from a bad one, Clear explained, but it won't happen overnight, and you might feel foolish for a while.

Still, he argues that these shouldn't paralyse us.

"Trying something new is usually a risk worth taking. If it doesn't work out, by this time next year you will have moved on and so will everyone else."

Finally, there are tattoo decisions; the permanent ones.

"Once you make them, you have to live with them," Clear warned.

"Some mistakes are irreversible. Maybe you'll move on for a moment, but then you'll glance in the mirror and be reminded of that choice all over again."

For these decisions, his advice is unambiguous: "Move slowly and think carefully."

It's an elegantly simple framework. But does it actually hold up when applied to the messy reality of our lives?

Testing the theory.

Distinguishing hat decisions is straightforward enough. What should I buy at the weekly shop? What do I wear today? Which Netflix show should I watch tonight? Where should we go out for dinner on Friday?

These are the mundane, everyday choices that require minimal mental energy because the stakes are wonderfully low. We can change our minds tomorrow, next week, or in the next five minutes.

But as we move up the decision-making ladder, things become murkier.

The gray area of haircuts.

Haircut decisions occupy a more nuanced space and often fall into a frustrating gray area. These might include changing jobs, ending a friendship that's run its course, moving to a different neighborhood in the same city, going back to study, starting a side business, or taking a gap year.

These decisions have consequences, sometimes significant ones, but they're not set in stone. You can find another job. You can rebuild friendships or make new ones. You can move back.

The recovery might be uncomfortable, the regrowth period awkward, but it's possible.

The challenge with haircut decisions is that we often don't know how long the "regrowth" will take or how painful it will be until we're in the middle of it.

The ultimate tattoo.

One decision stands apart from all others: having children. This is the ultimate tattoo. Irreversible, permanent, and capable of reshaping every aspect of your life from the moment you make it.

But there's a companion decision that deserves equal weight, one that often doesn't get the attention it warrants: choosing who you have children with.

While marriage might be argued as a haircut decision (you can divorce, after all, albeit through a very drastic and painful recovery, like a buzz cut you shouldn't have asked for and must now patiently, agonisingly grow out), the choice of co-parent is definitely a tattoo.

Even if the romantic relationship ends, the parenting relationship endures.

You'll make big life decisions and small ones with this person for years, depending on when you have children. All require coordination and compromise.

And it doesn't end when your children turn 18. There are graduations, weddings, first homes, career milestones, and eventually grandchildren to navigate together.

When hats become tattoos: The sliding doors effect.

Yet here lies the ultimate paradox of decision-making: sometimes the choices we think are insignificant turn out to be the most consequential.

Often it's the tiniest decisions, the ones we make without a second thought, that cascade into life-altering consequences.

I think about the night I chose to go to a specific pub in Melbourne after a BBQ nearly 18 years ago. It felt like a hat decision at the time, just picking where to have a drink.

But I met my now ex-husband that night. Without that choice, my two children wouldn't exist. I wouldn't have moved to, or be living in, Sydney. I wouldn't have the job or even potentially the career I have now.

One seemingly trivial choice created a domino effect that shaped my entire life.

That's the magic and the terror of decision-making. We can't always identify which hats will turn into tattoos until we're looking back years later.

This is what makes the framework both useful and limited. Some decisions reveal their true nature only in hindsight.

The verdict.

So, can we really boil down every decision in life to three categories? The answer is both yes and no.

Clear's framework provides a valuable mental model, a quick way to assess whether a decision warrants five minutes of thought or five months of consideration.

It permits us to move quickly on low-stakes choices and reminds us to slow down for the irreversible ones.

But life is rarely as clear-cut as hats, haircuts, and tattoos.

Decisions can shift categories based on circumstances beyond our control. A career change might be a haircut in your twenties, but feel closer to a tattoo in your forties.

Moving cities might be easily reversible when you're single, but it becomes exponentially more complex with school-aged children.

Our perception of a decision's permanence doesn't always match reality. What feels like a tattoo in the moment might turn out to be merely a haircut.

And most confoundingly, the choices we treat as throwaway hats can become the tattoos we carry for life.

Perhaps the real value isn't in perfectly categorising every decision, but in prompting us to pause and ask: What kind of decision am I actually making here?

How easily can I undo this if I'm wrong? What are the real consequences of getting this wrong?

And sometimes, that awareness is enough. That's all we can control, and that has to be enough.

Listen to the hosts on Mamamia Out Loud unpack the decision theory below.

Feature Image: Canva.