"Too many choices" by Greg McKeown from the Essentialism Book
"We have all observed the exponential increase in choices over the last decade. Yet even in the midst of it, and perhaps because of it, we have lost sight of the most important ones.
As Peter Drucker said, “In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be write, from a long-term perspective, it’s likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first tile – literally – substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it”
We are unprepared in part because, for the first time, the preponderance of choice has overwhelmed our ability to manage it. We have lost our ability to filter what is important and what isn’t. Psychologists call this “decision fatigue”: the more choices we are forced to make, the more the quality of our decisions deteriorates.
TOO MUCH SOCIAL PRESSURE
It is not just the number of choices that has increase exponentially, it is also the strength and number of outside influences on our decisions that has increased. While much has been said and written, about how hyperconnected we now are how distracting this information overload can be, the larger issue is how connectedness has increase the strength of social pressure Today, technology has lowered the barrier for other to share their opinion about what we should be focusing on. It is not just information overload it is opinion overload."
An extract of?Essentialism?from Greg?McKeown