“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?” – Albert Camus
Everything in life is a choice.
Having too many choices produces psychological distress, especially when combined with regret, concern about status, adaptation, social comparison and perhaps most important, the desire to have the best of everything – to maximize.
Part I – When we choose
- A large array of options may discourage consumers because it forces an increase in the effort that goes into making a decision.
- We are trapped in the tyranny of small decisions.
Part II – How we choose
- Knowing what we want means, in essence, being able to anticipate accurately how one choice or another will make us feel, and that is no simple task.
- The more often we encounter something, the easier it is for us to recall it in the future.
- Maximizer: Not satisfied with the purchase. One who always thinks there might be a better product out there. Is less satisfied and regrets the choices made more.
- Satisficer: One who is satisfied with the products they purchase. Don’t think much about what better products might be out there. Is more happier about the choices and life as a whole.
Part III – Why we suffer
- Having the opportunity to choose is no blessing if we feel we do not have the resources to choose wisely. What looks attractive in prospect doesn’t always look so good in practice.
- The quality of any given option cannot be assessed in isolation from its alternative.
- Being forced to confront tradeoffs in making decisions makes people unhappy and indecisive. Difficult trade-offs make it difficult to justify decisions, so decisions are deferred; easy trade-offs make it easy to justify decisions.
- When you have too many options, you are responsible for what happens to you. Bad results make people equally unhappy whether or not they are responsible for them. But bad results make people regretful only if they bear responsibility.
- While upward counterfactual thinking may inspire us to do better the next time, downward counterfactual thinking may induce us to be grateful for how well we did this time. The right balance of the both may enable us to avoid spiralling into a state of misery while at the same time inspiring us to improve our performance.
Part IV – What we can do
- Choose when to choose: “Two options is my limit” rule
- Be a chooser, not a picker: Discover the things what you truly care about and what you don’t.
- Satisfice more and maximize less: Learning to accept good enough will simplify decision making and increase satisfaction.
- Think about opportunity cost of opportunity cost: Don’t be tempted by new and improved.
- Make your decisions nonreversible
- Practice an “Attitude of gratitude”
- Regret less
- Anticipate adaptation
- Control expectations: Allow for serendipity.
- Curtail social comparison: Focus on what makes you happy, and what gives meaning to your life.
- Learn to love constraints: Choice within constraints, freedom within limits, is what enables you to imagine a host of marvelous possibilities.
Painting with words 