The Burden of Choice

'Variety, it's the spice of life' as the saying goes. We all like to have choices in our life, to feel like we have some control over what lies before us and not have it all laid out on our behalf, but in this magic day and age we live in, the choices often become so numerous that they become overwhelming.

Take a simple example, ice cream. I recall when I was young, if the treat of ice cream was presented, the offerings were vanilla, chocolate or strawberry. Easy enough, between those three, most folks could probably choose a favorite. But sometime around my later youth, new flavors began to come into the picture. It started off simply enough with chocolate chip (melding two of the 'basic' flavors), French Vanilla (who would have thought you could improve on vanilla), and maybe things got as crazy as rocky road (put the nuts and marshmallow IN the ice cream!). I guess people could not get enough of these because a flavor explosion occurred over the ensuing years/decades. Now when I step up to the local ice cream stand, I have to select from a dizzying array of taste choices, and when I finally settle with my flavor(s) of choice, then out comes the toppings menu.

So what's the problem? With so many choices, surely you can find what you like, isn't that a good thing? On the surface the answer would certainly be yes, however inevitably, no matter how hard I try to make the best choices, I experience regret. Initially I figured this must just be me, that I make poor decisions, or I just have the type of personality that always makes me wonder 'what if?', but it seems I'm not alone.

I did a little poking around on the internet and many articles have been written about what has been titled as 'Overchoice', where people are paralyzed (maybe a bit of an exaggeration) but the abundance of choices presented to them. A gentleman by the name of Barry Schwartz wrote a book called The Paradox of Choice which goes into a great deal of detail on the topic. A notable quote, "the more options there are, the more likely one will make a non-optimal choice, and this prospect undermines whatever pleasure one may get from one's actual choice." I hear you Barry, I wish I had gotten the Maine Moose Tracks instead of the Cookies 'n Cream.

So what can be done to abate this epidemic of choice? Something I've tried to alleviate this condition is something I will call 'pre-choice'. If I can make some level of determination of my selection prior to being exposed to the options, then I've already removed a cross section from the equation. An example I've mentioned before on this blog is toothpaste. There are easily a hundred different types of toothpaste in any grocery store to choose from, but by deciding that I don't want whitening in my toothpaste, I narrow my options down to just a few (or even one!), no pressure there.

What about a more 'daunting' decision, like say a menu in a restaurant? Same deal, we went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner last week. I had pre-decided that I was going to get a combination plate, so I only had to look at the options on that part of the (very lengthy) menu. While still having to decide from the 20 or so options on that list, it was much easier than sorting through the hundreds in the remainder of the menu.

The flood of choices aren't going away, in fact they will likely only become more numerous. So choose wisely and don't suffer from frozen confectionery regret, or just get a 6 scoop sundae and cover all your bases.

What items do you think that too many choices currently exist?