How do you avoid getting your pronouns confused?

[Xitra_Blud]

Say you have a sentence that involves two male characters. How do you avoid confusing the reader without the overuse of character's names. For example, you have a sentence that reads, "He made an even bigger mistake when he let Johnny convince him to let him do it for him."

I'm sure you noticed how confusing that was, but it would read weird had it said, "He made an even bigger mistake when he let Johnny convince him to let Johnny do it for him."

So my question is, how do I avoid confusing the reader without making the sentence awkward or weird? How to I make it clear who is doing what without the overuse of character names?

 

[Ban]

"Allowing Johnny to do this turned out to be an even bigger mistake than the previous one."

Rewriting my sentences is what i do, but that might not be very helpful. You could also use synonyms for your characters, but i receives some critique when i suggested that on another thread.