The Paradox of Choice
“The secret to happiness is low expectations.” -Barry Schwartz
“Would you like the meat, chicken, fish, or veggie option for lunch,” my mother would ask. She was volunteering at a charity event and giving the guests meals to enjoy before the movie. “Umm, which veggies are in that option? What type of fish is it? Hmm, I’ll take the chicken.” And then a minute later, “wait, wait, can I replace the chicken with the fish option?”
My mother continued to give out these lunches with this same trend. More than half the people asked to exchange their choice with another after they chose it. After a while there was only the chicken option left. Rather than giving the guests a choice, now my mother would simply hand them the lunch. Shockingly, these people were super happy with their lunch and appreciative of getting lunch at all. Paradoxically, even though only the least chosen option was left, the people who did not have a choice were more satisfied with their lunch.
Nirvana Fallacy
“Beware the temptation to combine all the best features of different approaches without considering the potential downsides and trades-offs.” -Adam Grant
We humans like to believe that the more choices we have the better. After all, we can reject the worse ones and with more choices we are more likely to find the best one. However, we are not perfect creatures. Additional choice increases anxiety, regret, dissatisfaction, and brings about what is known as the Nirvana Paradox.
To illustrate this paradox imagine you are choosing a place to live. You are considering three options: San Francisco, Boulder, and Amsterdam. San Francisco is good since you like tech and start-ups, but maybe you dislike the exorbitant cost of living or being in a big city. Boulder is nice since it’s smaller and quieter, in the pretty mountains, and has a great running community (I’m biased towards this), but the job prospects are low and you like some of the conveniences that cities provide. You always wanted to live outside the US at some point so Amsterdam seems like a fun option, but then you are away from family and you don’t speak Dutch.
The funny thing that happens in these situations is, without realizing it, we tend to create a fictional city named Amsterboulderisco. Amsterboulderisco has all the best things from each option without considering the cons. By increasing the number of options, the more unrealistic our idealized version becomes and the worse each individual option seems. This is the Nirvana Paradox.
In modern society we seem to be plagued by choice. Buying new shoes, ordering a coffee, choosing what to have for lunch, which show to watch, the friends we have, where to live, and not to mention all the opinions that society pressures us to choose opinions on. Society is drowning in choice, creating an environment fostering increased dissatisfaction even while having access to the best history has ever provided. Because compared to the Nirvana ideal, the best is still subpar.
The Importance of Time
“Tell me three months, I’d spend time with family. Tell me one year, I’d write a book. Give me ten years, I’d get back to treating diseases.” -Paul Kalanithi
Dr. Paul Kalanithi was on the verge of what was sure to become a renowned career in neurosurgery when he was struck at age 36 with stage IV lung cancer. In a moment his life script was reversed, where instead of treating patients he became the patient.
In that time, when contemplating his life, he wrote the quote above, wise words that stick to me, in his book When Breath Become Air. Staring at death, Paul is trying to decide what to do with the rest of his time on Earth, the ultimate decision. The quote highlights the importance of time in making such a decision. If he has more time, he’d like to continue exploring his specialty and maximize his impact; with fewer moments he’d like to write to impart his wisdom, and with even less he’d like to spend it with the people he loves.
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In AI there exists this exploration versus exploitation problem, where an agent must decide how to use it’s time to maximize it’s reward. At first the agents tend to explore heavily, getting to better understand the environment and learn. However, as time goes on the agents begin to exploit their known solutions.
In life, just like with AI or Paul’s story, in order to make the best decisions we must think about the time frame. For most decisions they barely impact our lives, from small purchases to deciding which book to read next, and for those we should aim to exploit quite quickly. For more impactful decisions, such as your career or life partner, it pays to explore.
For example, a typical career spans approximately 45 years. When leaving college and entering the job market people were telling me that I should accept a safe career option. Something stable that pays well. However, looking at the big picture, I believe it is best for me to explore potentially riskier options. Engage in jobs that are not as safe, not as directly in my field, ones I am less technically qualified for. As I then approach the later stages of my career I will have better knowledge of myself and other industries to have had a more successful career path overall even if it started off rocky.
For relationships something many people don’t realize is that they believe it is a life decision. While they might be right, I think most people don’t want to wait until their 90 until they choose their partner. The choice more likely ends by the time you are about 30 when you want to finally commit to someone and make whichever choice you settled on the best decision possible. Looking at relationships from this perspective it pays to explore what you want in a partner through less serious relationships when you are younger and be more explorative and open, and then as you approach that age you want to be married by you should switch modes and focus on finding a partner that satisfies you. And that word satisfy is important since no one is perfect.
Choose Quickly
“Successful people make their decisions quickly and change their mind slowly. Failures make their decisions slowly and change their minds quickly.” -Andy Andrews
“Should we watch Barbie or Oppenheimer?” “Should we eat at that restaurant around the corner again or try the new place that opened up not far away?” “Is partnering with this new client a good idea or should we stick with the clients we already have?”
Life is filled with these types of decision. They can be draining and a major time sink. Relating to what we were discussing before, there’s associated regret at thinking “what if” for choosing one option over the other.
Something we should learn is that for most decisions like these, we’re choosing between good and good. Option A and B can both work, but since we need to only pick one it makes the decision difficult. What I would suggest in these situations is to make the decision fast and make that the right decision. It doesn’t matter if option B was slightly better and you chose option A if you were able to choose option A in minutes and you could’ve took a week to make sure you were confident in that decision. Making a slightly suboptimal decision fast is better than making the optimal decision slowly. This is due to what we were saying about the cost of further exploration.
For most decisions, simply saying “I don’t care” and leaving the choice to a coin flip works better than weighing all the pros and cons. And once you make that decision, close the decision loop and don’t allow yourself to think “what if” about the other options. This will maximize your commitment to the decision you made and more often than not lead to an optimal outcome. After all, how much more productive and happier can you be if you make ten important decisions in a week quickly than having those same ten decisions take weeks or even months to get through?
Decision Making Rule-of-Thumbs
We discussed a lot of ideas when it comes to decision making, so to simplify your life and make you a decision-making master we’ll conclude with some rule-of-thumbs for decision making: