The Paradox Of Choice

It’s Saturday morning. You have the whole weekend ahead of you.
It’s what you’ve been waiting for — the world abounds with possibilities!

You could Burrito Wrap yourself and enjoy the Zzzzs under a warm quilt. You could spend time with your family. You could finally read the top 10 books to read before you die so you can die peacefully (gasp) Or catch up with your friends. Or visit the new club you recently heard about. Or watch the show everybody’s been raving about.

If you live a happening life, you could catch up with all those friends you’ve been meaning to catch up with. Go try your luck finding a new boy or girl. Try to ignite a spark with your latest tinder match. You catch my drift.

We think it’s great when we have so many choices. After all, it’s much more likely that we decide on an option that fits precisely what we need, right?

Instead, as I’m sure you can attest, we start feeling overwhelmed with the sheer number of options to choose from in many situations. It becomes hard to select any option out of the dozens of them.

I’m not an iPhone loyalist — every time I have to buy a new phone, I get shocked by the vast number of models, brands and features available on the market — I reach a point where all the names and numbers start jumbling together, I suddenly think it’s essential for me to get that dual optical video with stabilizing technology powered by an octachip blah blah blah before I eventually remember, I never even shoot videos in the first place.

Situations where we have truckloads of options to choose from, are called Choice Overloads.

Choice Overload: The tendency for people to get overwhelmed when they are presented with a large number of options

Let’s say you decide to do yourself a favour and stay in to read over the weekend. You’re congratulating yourself through Saturday until Sunday afternoon for making such a mature choice.

Come Sunday evening though, and a thought insidiously creeps in — I wonder what the boys are up to? Did they meet and have fun without me? How could they, and how could I let that happen?

Before you know it, the satisfaction in your decision is starting to seep away.

This isn’t FOMO — This is the Paradox of Choice.

The Paradox of Choice stipulates that while we might believe that being presented with multiple options actually makes it easier to choose one that we are happy with, and thus increases consumer satisfaction, having an abundance of options actually requires more effort to make a decision and can leave us feeling unsatisfied with our choice. — Barry Schwartz

Coined by Barry Schwartz (his TED talk introduces the concept beautifully), The Paradox of Choice is a cognitive effect we all face through every part of our life — especially in the 21st century. A layman in the 15th century had the choice of talking to the same 10 people she has known all her life, staring at the animals, or staring at the trees — not much else to do. Even 3-year-olds have more options now than did she 600 years back.

Choice Overload makes it hard to choose the right option to begin with — and the entire Paradox of Choice makes it hard to remain happy with the choice after making it!

So what do we do when we’re faced with a decision?

It’s simple, really.
You start by eliminating choices.

Let me repeat:

You start by eliminating choices.

When I buy a phone — I decide what the things I don't care about are. Number one on the list — Don’t care about the camera quality. Number two — Don’t care about the rendering. So on and so forth.

As a bonus, I also add the things I do care about in the end. Number one — battery life. Number two — should not lag at any point. Number three — should cost less than 1000$. Number four — should have ample storage. So on and so forth.

At the end of this process, I was left with 2–3 choices — the OnePlus 9, and the Samsung S20.

I’ve remained happy with my Oneplus 9 since I bought it a year and a half ago.

Learning to choose is hard. Learning to choose well is harder. And learning to choose well in a world of unlimited possibilities is harder still, perhaps too hard.

— Barry Schwartz , The Paradox of Choice