Too many choices

Last weekend me and a couple of my friends were out to dinner and had a really tough time choosing what to eat. It reminded me few things that came in the book “Paradox of Choice” by Prof Barry Schwartz.

Is having a lot of choices always a good thing..? Well, maybe not always. All of us know what’s good about having lot of choices.. So, what’s bad about it..

We have to make choices every day. It could be something simple like a choice for dinner.. or something important as a career path. The first problem about having many choices is that we spend a really lot of time and other resources in choosing one. And it is never easy to make a decision when the options are many. After all, our brains (at least most of ours’) cannot even add more than 2 numbers at once. So, comparing several options which are good in different aspects is not gonna be a facile task. Plus sometimes the resources spent on deciding are not really worth the outcome of the choice.

Another prob in having too many choices is that the opportunity cost of the choice we are making is going to be relatively high. The opportunity cost in these choices is the good features in other options that we forgo, when we decide on one. In reality, one choice is not going to be better in all aspects than another. So, the good features forgone are going to reduce the satisfaction we get from our choice of action. Imagine yourself making a choice between things to do on a weekend. Options could be studying/working, a game of cricket with friends, a party, a movie, and many more. All these options are having good features, but what if we have to choose only one. No matter what we choose, we are gonna miss the good aspects of the options we did not take. And the satisfaction we going to get from the weekend is going to get subdued by all these other good things that we are not doing.

Our level of expectation goes higher with the number of choices we are getting. Imagine you going out to a pizza place, and the only choices you have are chili chicken and vegetable pizza. Now imagine you having the option to have any topping you want, letting you decide how spicy or cheesy or etc etc you want it. Your expectations are going to be really high in the latter case, now isn’t it? The expectations would rise in such a way that, even a better tasting pizza in the second place would not make you satisfied, sometimes not to the extent even the first place does.

It could be the case that more choices will leave us at a better position. But what we should not forget is that happiness does not result in a rational evaluation of reality. So, sometimes, having to make a decision of a few choices with small expectations would make us happier, than after making the same decision with many options but also high expectations.

Another prob, as Prof Schwartz state in his book is that when we have many alternatives, theburden of responsibility of the decision comes to us. When we don’t have a choice, even though things are not good, we would not feel bad, as we could not have done better anyway. But if we had the choice, and we made a decision that resulted in the current state, we would tend to blame ourselves, and constantly regret the wrong choices we made. Well, isn’t it so much better when someone else has to make all the hard decisions

Well, I guess these are not actually disadvantages of having many choices, but merely the catch of having freedom to make our own choices. So, the next time you hear an inspirational speech about breaking out of the box and going beyond the limits, think again. Would it be all good?
Take a moment to answer this question.
If you could do anything tomorrow morning (go anywhere, do anything, with anyone etc etc.. no limits, remember), what would you do..?

Ok, stop dreaming now. I bet you thought of a really interesting thing to do, but I believe it wasn’t an easy answer to come up with. Now imagine having to make that kind of decision every morning.

Well, having to go to lectures every morning doesn’t look that bad now, does it..
I think limits are important sometimes.. If there were none, it probably wouldn’t be that easy to travel our path of life.

Soo.. I think there could be other catches of having too many choices.. I’m sure you can come up with a few by yoself..

Well, to end this note, here’s a lil advice I read somewhere, for guys when faced with many choices and it is hard to make a decission..
First listen to your, heart…
Then listen to your head…
Then, your wife will tell you what to do…

(No wonder men are happier people )