People make fun of me because when I go to a restaurant, I’ll just order the first thing I see that looks good. That means that if I like the first entree, I don’t need to see the rest of the menu. I’d rather make a good choice quickly than make the best choice after a lot of contemplation. If it’s not great then I’ll know that for next time.

On the other hand, when I’m shopping for a car, I’ll research every possibility, considering makes, models, trims, options, colors, new vs. used, etc. I actually think that’s fun, unlike reading a menu, which seems like work. Some people might think that sounds completely backwards, and that’s fine–we can all choose when to choose.

@Hunter
I agree with you about the menu thing! I once spent a year working as a consultant mostly living in hotels in cities other than my hometown, and thus always eating out at restaurants and cafes. Might sound like fun, but after no longer than a week of it it becomes fairly dreadful (especially when eating in public without company) - and the menu thing is the worst. The bigger the selection a restaurant had, the more aggravating I began to find it, until I literally began to just find the main meal section of the menu, close my eyes, and stab randomly at it with my finger to decide my meal. It was always nice food, of course, and that way the agony of choice stopped plaguing me!

I sure am glad I’m a “poor” student again, living in the same apartment every day and eating the same cornflakes for breakfast every morning…

This is as clear as hell to me. Maybe less in writing as in painting. Years and years ago, when I was a student at the academy of visual arts, on some sunny day the professor would send us out in the fields with words simular like this: ‘find yourself something to paint after nature, but don’t hesitate to long, don’t make to much of a fuzz of it. If you have found something you like, set a few lines and just start to paint and things will come to you by themselves, will gather and will tell you how they like to be painted.’ And he also gave some words of Cezanne: ‘If you have found a spot, don’t start to paint immediately, but first sit down and allow your senses to become familiar with your surroundings, so they don’t come distracted anymore from your subject. Then start to paint.’ Of course as a young student I didn’t listen very well and kept on searching and searching for the perfect thing to paint, never allowing myself to be with whatever simple things I saw. This left me with a whole lot of thought and beautiful and long walks, but very few paintings. I taught myself very well to walk away from the subject. Now after many many years I just begin to see a little what the professor ment by his words and painting is becoming more and more mysterious to me.

I definitely believe we have too many choices now, especially for things which are unimportant, like groceries. Now that I am a parent and I shop more, I find myself quite brand loyal simply because I don’t want to take in all the different possibilities for shampoo, for example. When the supermarket withdraws a product I buy, like they did recently with my son’s no-nut low-sugar muesli bars (believe me, hard to find) then I freak out at the thought that I now have to assess another 20 muesli bars to find a substitute. Agh!

I also believe the presence of so many choices in today’s world makes it very difficult for people to tune into their innate intuition about what is right for them. Look at the internet; it’s fabulous in so many ways, but if you wanted to research some options before you made a decision, then you’d be reading for a week at least because there’s so much information out there.

I really believe we have all the answers we need inside of us, we just have to be still and ask for them.

Nice blog by the way.

Kelly

I took a long walk with the question you have put up, and yes, less choice makes us more creative (to work with the very few things that are available forces me to come up with creative solutions) and yes, being more creative makes us happier, but It also makes us more sad. Maybe it reads like this: being more creative intensifies our experience.

As a man who likes to channel surf, I am definitely a “Maximizer”.

I might suggest that there is no problem with choice itself (even if we have “too” many choices available). The problem may be in that we assign value to our decisions that are not in alignment with our reality or principles. For example, we place too much importance on some decisions and find ourselves unable to make a decision without significant research (I know that as “analysis paralysis”). Or as Schwarz mentions, we blame ourselves when a decision turns out to be sub-optimum. Instead, we should think of that type of decision as a learning experience which should guide future decisions. Instead, the value some people assign is “failure” and the way to avoid that is to restrict options.
Another way to think of it, is that I’ve got over 200 stations to watch on TV … and while I may spend 30 minutes watching South Park, I should have learned that is not a good use of my time, instead of blaming the excessive number of stations I could have watched. GREAT POST. - Mike@ Zendonut

There is a lot of ‘auch’ in creativity and it goes hand in hand with destruction. In order to come up with something new the old has to go. Than there is choice witch is almost always inreversible. (I’m speaking of painting now, of course creativity is much broader than art alone). And also almost always it is a matter of ‘kill your darlings’ as someone once has put it. So the sadness of the consequences of choice and the destruction of the old goes with the joy of finding something new.

Interesting post. But it seems to me that if you are going to summarize the ideas in a fellow’s book, you ought to cite the book and the author upfront (i.e., these ideas are from Barry Schwartz’ book The Paradox of Choice) and maybe give a direct link to Amazon.com or other seller so the author can derive benefit from his ideas.

Ineresting post. But it seems to me that if you are going to summarize the ideas in a fellow’s book, you ought to cite the book and the author upfront—I didn’t see the author’s name or the name of the book at the beginning of the article and didn’t know you were summarizing his latest book!