The Tyranny of Small Decisions
My friend, Jean, sent me this hilarious YouTube video. It’s obviously drenched in satire, but the reality isn’t far off.
Psychologists like Barry Schwartz, a professor at Swarthmore College and the author of The Paradox of Choice continue to find that these little issues have a big overall effect. Little by little, these seemingly insignificant decisions about insignificant issues that we deal with hundreds of times every day, slowly suck the satisfaction right out of life. (Not to mention, sucking the energy out of your work day).
For Schwartz, the big problem is that we’re maximizing–trying to find the very best option, when we should be sufficing–picking an option that will suit us just fine, even if it isn’t the very best.
There’s a few solutions that can help you fix this problem. But for today, I just have 3 simple recommendations that I’ve already followed:
1. Watch this video and laugh.
2. Laugh at yourself for some of the insignificant choices that you’re putting way to much thought into right now.
3. Just decide. Whatever that decision is that you’re agonizing over, just make the decision and go on with your day. Even if it’s “wrong” you’ll still be just fine.
[...] is just another example of The Tyranny of Small Decisions at work in our lives. Whenever I ask people to think of decisions they’ve made, they [...]