Why Options Ruin Everything
yes… everything!
See this picture of the cookies? All nice and in rows… just waiting to be enjoyed. Well, most people would look at this and think that having so many to choose from would be awesome. They all look the same, right? Just pick one, right? RIGHT? My brain says no! I start thinking, this one might be bigger, or this one looks like it has more chocolate chips. Or…well you get the idea. If there was just one choice, that would be an easy decision to make… to eat or not to eat? I guess I am not ‘most people’.
My husband and I went to a restaurant years ago. We were seated and they handed us a menu that read like a table of contents... no choices! We weren’t asked what we wanted to eat, we were told what we were eating… and I LOVED it! Granted, the ‘restaurant’ wasn’t really a restaurant. It was actually a culinary school. Nonetheless, that night opened my eyes to a world of simplicity.
It sometimes makes me cringe to go shopping…for anything at all really. An ‘I’ll just run to the store’ turns quickly to ‘why did I even come here?’. My eyes running over all the different types of bread and having to decide which is…? Better tasting? Cheaper? Stays fresher longer? Goes better to eat with peanut butter?
A simple thought to go ‘get some flowers’ turns into my worse nightmare. I stand there feeling like I may have a full-blown panic attack if “Sam” from gardening doesn’t stop listing all of the different flowers that would work for what I’m looking for…
PINK SAM… I want to yell… JUST GIVE ME SOMETHING PINK!
So, I’m sure this makes me sound pretty flighty and just a touch crazy, but science is on my side here. Christina Hammond, MS, LMHC, from her article “What is decision fatigue?” put together an outline of this strange and ‘made-up sounding’ phenomenon. She says that “decision fatigue is a declining ability to make quality decisions after a long period of decision making.” Everything is a decision, she says, even small ones. What to eat, which shirt to wear, which way to drive, what to do at the yellow light... and the more decisions being made, the more the decision supply or willpower is used up.” So essentially, using up all of my energy on so many small decisions can lead to poor decisions being made later.
Iwas amazed to discover I was in a sense, normal. I mean… at least in this case. My tendency to stray away from making decisions about the ‘trivial’ things in my life, was really only my brain’s way of storing up my ‘decision energy’ for more important things. In his online article, “how’s your decision energy?”, Graham Oakes gives 6 ways to answer this question with positivity. The one way that sticks out to me is, ‘avoid decisions wherever possible’… and I’m dancing like YESSSS… this is what I’ve been trying to do!
He goes on to say that his company has branding guidelines, technical standards, etc., which keep them from having to waste energy on making the same decisions over and over again and I couldn’t agree with him more! His suggestion is duly noted during those times when I go out to eat at one of those ‘we have it all’ type of restaurant! My server happily tries to hand me a menu that looks like the last installment of Harry Potter, while also listing all of today’s wine and drink specials and I’m like,
“I’ll just take the chicken.”
So, the next time your friends rattle off a laundry list of things for you guys to do that day, or the prompts for a representative to ‘handle your call’ just won’t stop or your husband/wife asks you where you want to go eat’ for dinner,
shrug and walk away,
continuously press 0
and say “I don’t know babe” for the zillionth time,
all the while thinking ‘ain’t nobody got time for that’, because…well… you really don’t!
