3 Reasons Why You Should Limit Your Choices
The downsides to living in a world of options.
“Apparently, we always think we want choice, but when we actually get it, we may not like it. Meanwhile, the need to choose in ever more aspects of life causes us more distress than we realize.” — Barry Schwartz
Have you ever felt overwhelmed because of too many choices in your life? You may say not really, because it’s actually a good thing, right? The more choice we have, the more freedom we have. Well, that’s part of the story, but I also want to talk about what’s bad about having too many choices in our life.
It Makes You Paralyzed
When there are so many options to choose from, it simply makes harder to decide. “The Paradox of Choice,” a theory of Barry Schwartz, explains it well. When we are left with an abundance of options, it requires more effort to decide because we can get confused when we weigh the pros and cons and we become overwhelmed. Because everybody wants to get the best deal at the end of the day.
While more choices lead to freedom in a way, Schwartz explains that there is a sweet spot between having the freedom to choose what you want and being paralyzed in the face of too many options. When you are paralyzed with many options, you end up with indecision.
You probably have heard of the famous jam experiment conducted by Professor Sheena Iyengar. The study shows that people are more likely to buy jam when they have only three options than when they are exposed to sample a large assortment of 24. This study also supports that too many options create a delay in decision-making, which results in people giving up.
Too many options cause decision paralysis, and this paralysis either leads us indecision or increases the possibility of choosing the default option.
“The more a decision problem seems complex, the more we tend to choose the default option.” — Dan Ariely
Escalated Expectations Lead to Anxiety and Inaction
I assume that many of you know the notion of so-called FOMO. Just as defined here: it is about having ‘more’ and ‘better’. It gives you a sense that there might be better things than whatever you have right now. When it comes to make a decision among many options, the system works in the same way.
When we have more options, it escalates our expectations, even creates new ones. We start to think about the more of everything. With our escalated expectations, we tend to find the perfect one among the options regardless of what we need or what we want. Because there must be a very best option and we need to find it. This false perfectionism trap creates anxiety about making a wrong decision. Therefore it makes difficult for us to commit any choice since we are anxious about the missed opportunities. As a result, we either put the decision-making off later to make sure we get the decision right.
But the critical thing is that it is not about getting the very best all the time; it is about what matters to you at most. And this requires effort to know yourself. Knowing yourself is absolute freedom because it makes you figure out the essential criteria to meet your specific needs. By doing so, you can set your own boundaries, and you can be in control of your life rather than being controlled by the options presented.
“Your choices of which clothes to wear or which soda to drink, where you live, which school to attend and what to study, and of course your profession all say something about you, and it’s your job to make sure that they are an accurate reflection of who you really are. But who are you, really?” — Sheena Iyengar
Lots of Alternatives Lower Your Satisfaction
“Emotional cost of potential trade-offs does more than just diminish our sense of satisfaction with a decision. It also interferes with the quality of decisions themselves.” — Barry Schwartz
Thanks to the internet and social media, we can easily see and reach all different options. It is not only about purchasing something; they also changed the way of choosing a partner. You can have dozens of options at your fingertips by using several dating applications. Yet, people don’t feel satisfied and happy with what they have. But why? Let’s see.
Despite all that option wealth, let’s assume that you overcome the paralysis, calm the anxiety and eventually make a choice. Then you probably start to think about whether you made the right decision or not. That thought triggers you to imagine that you could’ve made a different choice that would’ve been better. And these imagined alternatives convince you to regret the decision you made, even though it is actually a good decision. This regret lowers your satisfaction you get out of the decision you made because it is easier to regret anything that disappoints you about your choice when there are lots of other options.
Recently, I read an article on the paradox of choice in Stanford Daily with the example of Tinder, and it says;
“The seemingly infinite supply of options allowed me to care less, to distance myself, to treat people like items in an online shopping cart… as a result, I found myself deeply unhappy with all of it.”
The infinite supply of options clearly does not make us happy, and more is not always satisfying.
Final Thoughts
While we don’t control over how many options we are presented with, but we do have control over how we react and control our decision-making process. It means we need to understand the determinants of our decision-making process. That is exactly why knowing yourself is crucial. Once you know what you need, you will automatically shortlist the options.
We strive for alternatives to maximize our happiness. However, the alternative to maximizing is to be a satisficer. Being a satisficer is usually misunderstood as satisficers settle for low standards. In fact, they are just pleased to settle for a “good enough” option. Their standards can be high, but as soon as they find the qualities they are looking for, they are satisfied. It means they do not think about attractive features of the other possible options so that they are less likely to be regretful. And this state of mind cultivates happiness.
Remember that it’s certain that some choice is better than none. But it does not mean that more choice is better than some choice. And the best” does not guarantee happiness. The important thing is what is “the best” for you.
