The Paradox of Choice-Barry Schwartz

Photo by Jon Tyson. Book by Barry Schwartz. Published by Cuaderno Reciclado. Article by Me.

One night at a bar in the East Village, I overheard a conversation that was like a sledgehammer to my ego. As I sat down I had just enough time to scan the group in the booth behind us. They were cool. Artists or hipsters probably. Dressed in thrift and heavily accessorized.

We were decidedly uncool. I was there on business, caught between a dweeb from the London office and an antisocial from Pittsburgh. The Londoner, in true English tradition, was there to show off and bring the colonial class structure back to the US. And the Yinzer was just happy to be there. He even brought out his old 1980’s oversized suit for the trip to the county’s biggest city.

*Side note — A Yinzer is a person from Pittsburgh. They’re called that because, in the local dialect, the “you” in the plural form (like y’all) is often pronounced “yinz” or “yunz”. It might be becoming somewhat derogatory because it implies a certain ruralness and backwardness. I don’t know. All I know is that this guy was a self-identified Yinzer and seemed pleased that I knew the term.

Meanwhile, I was just trying to maintain the peace and oversee a new merger between the two teams. Stupidly I had brought them to one of the bars my friends and I often went to. It was alternative and usually free of tourists and the Wall Street gang. How we stuck out with our suits. I felt like a traitor bringing these office toilers there.

Our conversation quickly went to sports. One of the few topics unlikely to provoke anyone and therefore acceptable for business. I hate talking about sports. I don’t know anything and I don’t pretend to. Fortunately, both Londoners and Yinzers love sports. Unfortunately, they like different sports.

Bored by sports and varied Anglophone idiosyncrasies, I was very distracted by the conversation happening behind us, where we were the topic. I could hear everything clearly, people in New York don’t really care about insulting you. It’s culturally acceptable to hurl at least one insult a day at an unsuspecting tourist or minor offender of your own personal opinion for an ideal society.

First, they were disappointed to see us there. How did we stray this far from Wall Street? They’d have to find a new bar. We weren’t a good sign clearly. The fall of the bar was imminent, and the heydays were over. “Wait it’s me!” I thought, “just in a suit. I’m a regular.”

Next, they turned to our life decisions. They could never be “cogs in the wheel” like us or common rats in the rat race. Where were our morals? All this I had heard before. But then someone said something that I had been thinking about for a while. “I could never have a job like that because I like getting up every morning and deciding what I want to do.” Ouch.

Look, I coveted this job in college. In New York, they say that there are only 4 real jobs. Yankees, N/FYPD, 5Th Avenue, and Wall Street. At least that’s what my grandfather says. In 8th grade I failed to make the baseball team, my mother forbids me to go into any profession mildly dangerous, and I hate selling overpriced junk to awful people. That left finance.

The thing about finance though is that you don’t really have a lot of choice over the decisions in your life. The to-do list is perpetual and decided at a level above your clearance. You’re expected to fly to Chicago or wherever within 2 days’ notice. And, if the boss asks you, you have to spend your evenings entertaining out of town colleagues and clients, showing them the local scene so they come back and bring their business to the city. Hence the situation I found myself in that bar that night.

Five months later I would quit and do what all rational people should do. I moved to Paris to become a student again and took up writing. Now I can’t escape choice even if I wanted to. Every day I wake and listen to one of 17 podcasts, I choose coffee or tea, croissants or pain au chocolats or crepes, or eggs, and orange or apricot juice. I should study each day but I don’t. I can study from any of 6 economics courses. Or maybe I can work on my thesis, or that article I wanted to write, or maybe even a book. I am a “writer” after all.

The problem is that some days I decide to do nothing and let the work pile up. No one is going to fire me for it. On these days off I can watch a film in French, there are 647 on Amazon video and I don’t even know how many on Netflix. I could do battle with French grammar, I have 4 applications for that. Or, I could go visit a museum, there are 130 in the city. I have, as you can see, an abundance of choices these days and now this is my problem.

The book, finally

The book of the week is The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz. Ironically, it took me almost an hour to commit to it because I have 82 unread titles in my audible collection, a bunch on kindle, and a few tree-killing paperbacks with me. Professor Schwartz teaches at Swarthmore college which is somewhere in Pennslyvania and probably very pretty and remote. (Later edit: actually, it is right next to Philadelphia which shows you how well I know my own country and how judgemental I am).

When you are poor, say a medieval serf working on a wheat farm, you don’t have many choices in life. You work and work and just make enough to get by. Fortunately, the living standards of the world have increased dramatically since then and now we are faced with real first world and 21st century daily questions like which of the 231 cereal available options best suits you.

Make fewer but better choices

Professor Schwartz argues that rather than please us, the more options we have, the harder it gets to choose and to choose well. These micro choices that we face constantly, weigh us down. We might think that we have an endless capacity to choose but in reality, we can only truly consider a few important things per day. This is why, supposedly, Mark Zuckerberg wears the same hoodie and jeans every single day. To focus on decisions at work and not in his closet. I personally think that he just had no fashion sense to begin with, but anyway, the idea is there. In order to make better decisions in life, we need to make fewer and more carefully considered choices.

To implement this in your daily life, I suggest writing down the big questions of the day in your journal, on a notepad, or even on the bathroom mirror in red lipstick if you’re a diva. It doesn’t really matter. The only thing that matters is that you know what matters.

Personally, I like to write two lists, my goals and the decisions I have to make. I recently used this method to resolve where I should be applying for my next job. There are plenty of desirable jobs in New York and London and Milan and Singapore. And I would be happy in any of those places. A quick look at my Goal list though reminds me that I came to this country to become French, to embrace even the weirdest parts of this country. So, I will choose to stay in France. Plus, I’m looking forward to the lunch breaks, numerous vacations, and ridiculously long deliberation about everything.

Is everything satisfactory?

Not best, not perfect, or even ideal. Professor Schwartz says to look to find satisfactory solutions. Looking for the best of anything depletes bank accounts and causes unnecessary stress. It’s why thousands of otherwise respectable people will sleep on the street outside of an Apple store for the new iPhone. It’s the latest and greatest and best and they must have it. There’s no rational need to pay for something when what you have is already sufficient. We’ve all done it, and I will now use myself as an example.

I own two nearly identical black hard shell suitcases. I bought the first because I needed it. I bought the second one 2 weeks later because I thought it was better than the other one. Something about the wheels and handle being slightly better quality. The differences are so minuscule that when I actually left for Paris one month later, I was in a rush as usual, and stuffed my things into the inferior one having not realized until this moment. And, yes I’ve just checked. I brought the wrong one. Seriously, what an idiot.

Stop thinking about “what if?”

Now that I am an “economist,” opportunity cost is something I know a bit about. Opportunity cost is the loss of other alternatives when one alternative is chosen. It’s when you think about what could have been if you said yes to a date with Billy in high school. You’d probably be happily married and living in a 1950’s magazine house with a dog and 3 children. Instead, you went to the prom with motorcycle-riding Tim the Terror and now your life is just crap. Every bad choice and misdirection can be traced back to that moment.

Professor Schwartz advises not to ponder about past choices. What’s done is done. Out of all of the million choices you bought the wrong suitcase, you moved abroad, and you dated Tim the Terror. Don’t berate yourself for it. This is just the reality of living in a society with so many choices. What’s important is that you can make better choices going forward. And you can start by choosing to read this book.

The Paradox of Choice is a book written, unlike this article, in a very considered and professorial way. Firstly, anyone named Barry is trustworthy in mine and everyone’s opinion. Secondly, if you, like me, have been feeling overwhelmed and making bad choices, you will benefit from reading the details of this book. The studies are convincing and the ideas are plainly critical of our modern way of life. After reading this book I have been more focused and sensitive about the decisions I make. I only eat store-brand cereal now and have the fashion variety of a cartoon character. Hopefully, I will make better decisions now too and won’t have to start so many misadventure stories with, “One night at a bar……stupidity ensued.”