How long does it take you to decide?
You're probably thinking it depends, how much information do you have? What or how many things do you have to make a decision about? What do you have to gain or, even worse, what do you have to lose?
We make decisions each day and many of them quickly. Should you brush your teeth in the morning? Drive the kids to school? Even going outside with clothes on instead of just your underwear is a choice.
On the other hand, there are the not so easy decisions. Where should you go for dinner? What laptop to buy? Which pair of shoes are you going to go home with from the store?
Sometimes even these decisions aren't so bad. You'll go to your favorite restaurant, you'll buy a Mac because that was the last computer you had and it worked fine, and you'll get the pair of shoes that are on sale. It's when you get into unknown or new territory, when it's hard to tell the difference, that decisions can become a burden.
In his bestselling book The Paradox of Choice, professor Barry Schwartz investigates this phenomenon and explains why even buying blue jeans, with all of their different cuts and styles, can take forever and even lead to what he calls analysis paralysis.
He explains how when it comes to choice you can have too much of a good thing and that we over value having as much information as possible. This doesn't mean we shouldn't have options or that every set of options should be the same for every person. What's important is recognizing that the more we have to choose from or the more information we have to process the more overwhelming decisions can be and when it matters we should take steps to avoid over analyzing.
Schwartz puts the world on a spectrum of people who are either 'Maximizers', 'Satisficers' or somewhere in between. Maximizers are always looking for the best choice, they’re the ones that when going out to buy something will start on Google, search 'best headphones', find a bunch of reviews or lists and then painstakingly go over them, read more reviews, ask their friends, and then make their purchase (which they'll probably second guess as soon as they leave the store or confirm their order on Amazon).
On the other hand, a Satisficer might start the same way on Google, find a few reviews or a top 10 list and pick the headphones at the top of the first or second list they find that doesn't have as many bad reviews. In both instances, the goals are similar, buy a pair of headphones, but where the Satisficer is fine with a 'good enough' product the Maximizer must have the best.
Most of us are not one or the other, most of us are Satisficers for some things and Maximizers for others. What we care about, how much we are spending, whether we're deciding alone or in a group all impact the direction we lean towards.
The life of a Satisficer certainly seems attractive, and while the satisfaction of making the best possible choice as a Maximizer might be compelling the work it requires is not.
So why is this even a problem? Aren't we lazy by default? If decisions are challenging why don't we slip into Satisficer mode and call it a day? We often do, it's why we're able to function day to day. We're not always trying to get the best toothbrush, the best type of printer paper or even the best deal on gas.
So why are some decisions easy and some hard? There are many reasons why this can be the case. Things like price sensitivity, emotional attachment, and loss aversion all play a role. The most common factor by far though is information and choice.
Choosing a car would be easy if there was just one make and model, or even six or seven. It also wouldn't be too hard to evaluate them if some had cup holders and some didn't. Yet double the number of models, the types of media systems, the interior, the color, the mileage and even if you filter down by things in your price range you get stuck. Instead of just one or a handful of cars, you're now evaluating the cars and their add-ons both together and by themselves. Our brains aren't very good with these complex situations.
But surely you say cars are different, they're a huge investment so of course choice isn't easy and it's not like we buy a car every day. How often do we face complex choices like that regularly?
Let's take going out to dinner. For many picking where to eat (especially when looking for something new) can be a huge time investment and in the last few years has only gotten worse. With every business at your fingertips with Yelp, Foursquare, or Google Places it's so easy to find new spots but also too many of them.
How long did it take you the last time you used the internet or an app to find a place for dinner?
I'm willing to bet you didn't answer 'quickly'.
First, you opened the app, searched for dinner places or even a particular type of dish or flavor you were interested in but then what? Well you probably looked at what was rated above a certain number of stars, started reading reviews, looked over pictures, compared a few top choices, focused on a best possible choice, double checked to see if there was a better choice compared to that, and maybe then decided to go if you hadn't lost the will to leave the house at that point and just eaten what was left in the fridge.
Humans are very resourceful animals, we make use of as much as we can to find the best advantage and maximize our gains. We're wired to use any information provided to us even if it's not that important. All of this extra information triggers our Maximizer mode and turns something that should be as easy as choosing one of many options, where you probably can't go wrong, into a high-stakes research project.
So what can be done then? How do we free ourselves from the tyranny of choice and make decisions quickly so we can move on and enjoy our lives?
Do not despair, there is hope and it's the subject of our next article.
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