I love this article on why easy decisions are so hard by the ludicrously young and authentic Jonah Lehrer, author of How We Decide and Proust was a Neuroscientist. I’ve mentioned it here on this blog a lot…that I struggle to make the simplest of decisions, like what toothpaste to buy. And other such”first-world problems”. (As an aside, for thyroid disease folk…indecision is a very AI trait).
I loved, mostly, how Jonah confesses that he’s crap at making toothpaste decisions, too, despite being an expert on how we decide. He picks the research apart and finds that we stall with dumb decisions because we allow ourselves to be fooled into thinking they’re important decisions simply because they’ve been made complicated (mostly by too many options):
“Call it the drug store heuristic: A cluttered store shelf leads us to automatically assume that a choice must really matter, even if it doesn’t.”
The analysis paralysis makes us think the decision is important…which intensifies the paralysis. And around and around we go. It’s a very real issue for more of us. We’re bombarded with more stupid options daily.
This is how I simplify decisions?
- Narrow your choices. Actively.