Why We Make Poor Choices and How to Make Better Ones
The solution lies in simplifying our choices and changing our identity.
Poor choices are often made in a split second. For example, when we hear people talking about the poor choices they’ve made such as cheating on their spouse, people often say that “it just happened”.
When we think about our own poor choices like bingeing on yet another takeaway meal or making yet another compulsive purchase when we can scarcely afford it, it seems to just happen and seemingly beyond our control.
But is that really the case?
Small decisions become huge problems
In our daily lives, we have multiple decisions to make. From the moment we wake up, we decide what to wear, what to eat, how to get from A to B, what tasks we need to do for the day and yes, what shows on Netflix do we watch. According to various sources, we make about 35,000 decisions per day which can seem a little high, but regardless of exact figures, we do make many decisions in a day.
Even though choosing what to eat or deciding whether to buy an item seems trivial for some, for others it means the difference between feeling satiated and overeating or feeling good about a purchase and experiencing immense shame over overspending.
These little things we do add up over time as James Clear wrote in his book, Atomic Habits:
“All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single tiny decision.”
Before we know it, a pleasurable treat of the occasional doughnut becomes a daily habit, or an occasional luxury purchase rolls into an accumulation of debt and shame.
Everyone who has a bad habit or has chosen poorly before knows what to do, they know they need to make changes, and choose differently. Yet, even when we know the right thing to do like eat better, shop less we still make the wrong choices, why?
Decisions, decisions
Tell me, does this sound familiar to you: it’s the end of a long workday, and you are scrolling on your phone trying to decide what to order for dinner and you look at the thousands of options available to you at the simple scroll and tap of your thumb and what do you settle on? Your usual Chinese/Vietnamese/Thai/Pizza takeaway of course!
Similarly, when we scroll on Netflix trying to find a movie to watch as we devour our delivered meal, we often resort to movies we have watched a million times before. I mean, honestly, how many times have you watched Lord of the Rings trilogy or Harry Potter movies?
We do this not because we are boring individuals (well, maybe some of us are) but we do this due to decision fatigue. According to Baumeister and his colleagues, we have a limited capacity when it comes to regulating our behaviors. Throughout the day, our cognitive capacity is depleted through activities such as working on a stressful project, dealing with difficult people and of course making other random decisions too.
This depletion, known as ego depletion, leaves very little resources left to make more decisions at the end of the day. And so, when it comes time to decide on what to do after work, we default to the easier choice of what we have ate and seen a million times before.
Furthermore, researchers have also found that making choices also reduces our self-control and can cause us to choose poorly which is also how we end up with fast food instead of salad or binge-watching TV series instead of working on our passion project.
The discomfort of change
It is safe to say that we all could do with some changes in our lives which can only occur by making different choices. However, as we well know, making changes is difficult to start and even more difficult to maintain.
When faced with beliefs and ideas that are contrary to our existing worldview, we experience a cognitive dissonance. The mismatch between the presenting info and what we already know and buy into causes us to feel uncomfortable and often, rather than changing our beliefs, we would rather choose to avoid the discomfort by avoiding the new information altogether.
Likewise, when it comes to change, we feel a dissonance when it comes to making new choices. We are confronted with the knowledge that our current choices are not working out so well, we also experience the discomfort from accepting new beliefs and the pain of executing new behaviors.
For example, it is uncomfortable when we first start going to the gym if we have fallen off the exercise wagon a long time ago. It is uncomfortable for us to choose a Buddha bowl instead of fast food. And, it is absolutely uncomfortable to choose being single even if our current relationship stinks.
We could change our behaviors to placate the dissonance, however, according to the psychologist Leon Festinger, we are reluctant to change because:
- the change could involve loss of some kind such as current lifestyle, beliefs and identity
- the current behavior might be satisfying to us such as smoking for example
Additionally, when we know we should make changes and don’t do it, we also try to assuage our cognitive dissonance by choosing to believe that we are better off just the way we are.
In this instance, nothing ventured, nothing gained with nothing lost neither and the balance is restored, in our minds at least.
How to re-engineer our decision-making capabilities
Even though it seems like our minds are working against us and seem to encourage bad choices, we can do something about it. Here’s how you can help boost your chances for making better choices:
1. Reduce decision fatigue by simplifying your choices
Ever notice that many successful people have a habit of doing, wearing or even eating the same thing nearly every day?
We all know that Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs have their uniform of grey t-shirt and jeans for Zuckerberg and black turtleneck sweater and jeans for Jobs. Why do they do that? Surely they can afford more clothes? Of course, they can. They do this because it reduces the decisions they make on trivial matters thus leaving their brains free to make better decisions on more vital matters and increase their productivity.
Some people reduce decision fatigue in how they eat as well. It is no secret that bodybuilders eat similar meals everyday with chicken, vegetables, eggs, and rice as the recurring ingredients. Likewise, celebrities do the same to get in shape for a role or just to maintain their figure. For example, David Beckhams revealed in an interview that Victoria Beckhams has pretty much eaten the same meal everyday for the last 25 years which is how she stays lean all the time.
What choices can you simplify in your daily life? Perhaps meal prepping a few meals or few days out of a week? What can you plan or decide the night before so you can just get to your goal or task without thinking too much about it?
2. Change your identity
The daily choices we make become the habits that can shape the person we become. For change to occur, we need to make better choices and create better habits. However, habits and identity feed off each other. It is not a case of “I will be this person when I make this change” it is more about “being the type of person that chooses certain behaviors.”
In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear wrote:
“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”
Clear asserts that for change to occur, we need to change our identity first and shift from setting outcome goals to identity goals instead. To do that, we should first embody the identity of the person we aspire to become. If you are trying to get healthier by losing some weight, the goal you might set is losing 20 pounds. Or, you might set process goals like meal prepping every week. However, when you set identity goals, you might aim to become a person who nourishes your body consistently.
It is not enough to just set identity goals, now you need to create small wins for yourself to reaffirm your new identity. To go with the example above, your small win would be eating a nourishing breakfast for four mornings this week, not based on calorie counting but based on how nutritious it is and how well it makes you feel.
Furthermore, the more you act upon your better intentions, the more you reaffirm your identity and you will slowly reduce the cognitive dissonance created by the gap between your past identity and current identity. This reduction will then help ease the discomfort of adhering to new habits and before you know it, these habits will become second nature to you.
Remember, the more you do, the more you become.
Conclusion
It is not easy to make the right choices. We get exhausted, our decision-making capacity becomes depleted, and this is true for everyone, even the most disciplined of us.
Decision fatigue can be reduced in some aspects but it will not disappear. You will falter, but you will get back up and make the right choices again.
The changes you want to make will not occur overnight and you will not become the person you envisioned immediately but it will happen if you consistently make the right choices for yourself.
