How do you deal with gaming paralysis?

There are three related kinds of gaming paralysis — or, at least. in my head there are. The first is simply not being able to pick a game to play in the first place. This one is one I’m definitely feeling very, very hard right now. I have Diablo 4, Baldur’s Gate 3, and World of Warcraft to deal with, and in the future both Starfield and Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty will demand a great deal of my time and focus. It makes it hard for me to actually decide what game I should play in the first place and I have actually sat here watching shorts on YouTube or Instagram Reels for hours instead of picking a game to log into. Or worse, watching videos that tell me what builds I should be using for any one of the games I’m currently not playing because I’m watching videos about how to play them.

Worse than that, though, is when I do get myself to log on and start playing a game and then I start circling the plot objectives and encounters I know I should be doing to waste time doing silly things like trying to find out how to get down to the beach or what have you. Yes, I should be freeing a Druid from a Goblin encampment. No, I should not be using my Speak With Animals spell to talk to every spider in this cave. And yet, here I am, not doing what I am supposed to be doing because I can’t stop giggling when I talk to that Owlbear.

She’s very angry, that Owlbear.

Finally, there’s the worst one of them all — the paralysis of which game to buy. I got lucky and didn’t have to buy Baldur’s Gate 3 because someone else bought it for me several years ago when it was in early access, but I’m staring at my empty bank account and looking at Phantom Liberty and Starfield and, man, I can’t decide which game to skip eating for this coming month. It’s crazy. In fact, I had to give up on even thinking about playing Tears of the Kingdom this year because I couldn’t decide between picking up a Switch or just staying with PC games, which is the decision I ended up making by default.

Does this ever happen to you guys? Do you often end up just letting your inertia carry you when you have these moments of gaming paralysis?