The Paradox of Choice

I've actually managed to read a couple of books not assigned by my book group. I really enjoyed the most recent one, The Paradox Of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz. It's a fascinating analysis of how the many choices that we face -- from the number of cereal brands to careers and life styles -- limit our ability to enjoy the ones we make.

Schwartz categorizes people into "maximizers" -- for whom only the best will do -- and "satisfizers" -- who stop looking for other choices when they find something that's "good enough". While the former group may end up making more "optimal" choices, they tend to spend an inordinate amount of time seeking the perfect thing and are then less satisfied with it because, subconciously, they know they could have found something event better if they had looked longer and harder. Like most people, I'm a maximizer in on some things (gadgets and such) and a satisfizer on others (cloths, for example).

So what's the problem with too many choices? Schwartz says that each additional choice we examine, makes our ultimate pick a little less desireable because it will lack some aspect of the new choice. I can completely relate to that. When I was buying my digital SLR a couple of years ago, there really only was only one choice in my price range so it was a no brainer and there was no buyer's remorse. When I was getting Jennifer a small digital camera for Christmas last year, the number of brands, models and features was overwhelming. I took a lot of time examining different cameras, deciding which were more important in size, resolution, price, speed, zoom size, manual control and many more aspects. I got her a great cameras, but I had looked at others that were smaller, with greater resolution, cheaper, faster, better zoom, with more controls, etc. -- of course, none of these in a single camera.

The Paradox of Choice is not a "self help" book -- and is not intended as such. But I think that being aware of how we make choices, about opportunity costs and regret, makes it easier to not get all hung up on things.

BTW, this is one of the reasons I like to shop at Costco. Sure, they have good stuff at reasonable prices, but more importantly, they usually only have one kind of a product, which takes a lot of the decision making out of your hands.