The Paradox of Choice

More options don’t liberate us—they paralyse us.

Barry Schwartz

The modern world is a deep, dark pit of endless decision-making.

Have you ever spent an hour choosing food on Uber Eats or DoorDash? Or tried to find something to watch on your favourite streaming service, only to check streaming services 2, 3, 4 and 5?

Have you ever tried online dating? Set up a date, and then another cute match popped up and bam – you’re double booked? Or spent an inordinate amount of time just swiping.

Ever studied something or started a new job, only to change your mind quickly?

What about the daily dilemma of what to wear? Where or if to exercise? Or what car to buy? Who to socialise with, where to move to, what content to consume, what to buy at the supermarket?

Modern life gives us limitless options, and rather than liberating us, it can paralyse us.

Making decisions is hard, cognitively taxing, and studies show that having more to choose from can actually affect our mental health.

We weren’t made to analyse and choose between literally millions of different options, and making all these decisions affects us incredibly adversely.

Making an avalanche of decisions every day can lead to:

Decision paralysis: rather than just choosing something, you do nothing and you’re stuck staring at two identical white shirts. Totally not speaking from experience.

Decreased satisfaction: whatever we choose, we feel like it doesn’t live up the hype in our mind.

Increased regret: we make a decision and wish we had chosen differently.

Unrealistic expectations: we have sky-high expectations for our decision-making because there must be a perfect option.

Self-blame: if the choice we’ve made isn’t perfect, we blame ourselves for not making the perfect choice.

In short: abundance creates anxiety.

Deep down, we’re simple creatures. We’re semi-evolved apes, masquerading as galactic overlords.

Whether you believe in evolution, the Stoned Ape theory, some form of Holy Deity, or think that we were impregnated by aliens, the fact of the matter is, we never evolved to live in the environment that we’ve created.

Throughout 99% of our history, survival meant that you lived where the season and tribe dictated, you ate what was in season, you had one or two mating prospects, and your career path was mainly not to die.

You wore animal skins or nothing at all. You hung out with your tribe of max 150 people, you went to bed not long after the sun went down, and you slept until the sun came up. And you didn’t have to worry about what gym class to take.

Our brains evolved for scarcity, not abundance.

Optionality is cognitively expensive.

Now, your career paths are endless. You may not feel like it, but your mating options are ridiculously high. What you wear, eat, who you talk to, how you get to work, what vehicle you’re going to buy, where you’re going to holiday, even which “optimal morning routine” you’ll copy from some influencer who gets paid to coffee-douche, it’s all up to you.

It’s a bit silly, really. We live in a society where everyone struggles to choose what type of water to drink, yet every decision holds significant moral weight:

Choose the wrong job? You’ve wasted potential.

Choose the wrong partner? You ‘deserve’ better.

Choose the wrong booty influencer to copy? You’re falling behind.

Not eating Carnivore/Vegan/Paleo/Keto? You’re probably going to die slowly/shit yourself/never shit again/get hit by a bus from bad karma.

A world full of decision-making isn’t natural. Our brains were created in environments of scarcity, not abundance. A time when one option was good, two options are fucking great. When the only form of entertainment was dancing naked around a fire for kicks.

We’re operating on typewriter software, and our society demands we upgrade to IOS 55 when that shit is lightyears away.

And so. We become restless, anxious, perpetually unsatisfied and always looking for the shiny new thing.

Paradoxically, having a world of options makes us feel like we’re always choosing the wrong one.

It affects our self-confidence, erodes our self-belief, and we end up with a nagging feeling that things could be better.

The internet has turned decision-making into a competitive sport. Let’s use dating as an example. At your fingertips, you can swipe on an absurd number of people in a 100km radius. If you pay, your dating profile can travel the world. You can slide into as many hotties as you want on Instagram, again, anywhere in the world. You can cast as many lures as your fingers can handle before cramping.

You may be amazingly content in your dating life; that’s fine. Dating is a microcosm for the rest of life. We have:

chronic dissatisfaction
fear of committing
“grass is greener” syndrome

We’re missing simplicity.

I once had a conversation with my dad about starting a new business. I said I don’t know what the right option is.

I’m a somewhat clever and ambitious individual, hindered by my past decisions in terms of education and career. I was single-parenting at the time, and I still had way too many options, which led to literally months of inertia, stuck in a job I hated.

Dad had some hard words for me before saying to just choose. Make a decision.

‘Don’t worry about making the right choice. Choose, and MAKE it the right choice..

Not just for a week or a month or a year.

Simplicity certainly isn’t sexy. Simplicity isn’t $35 supplement-fueled juices and 12-step morning routines to optimise your day. Simplicity sure as fuck isn’t wearing copper-wired ‘grounding shoes’ to help you absorb the earth’s energy better.

Simplicity is drinking 3 litres of water, turning your phone off, reading and getting to bed early.

Simplicity is slowly walking barefoot down a dirt track.

Simplicity is quieting the noise around us, so that we can decrease our anxiety and hear our life again.

Simplicity decreases our mental load and kills the worm of anxiety before it even hatches.

So?

Let’s make life simple.

Not stone-age simple, but simpler.

Close some tabs, both literal and metaphorical. Throw out the shit you don’t need. Skip the biohacking, just get some more sleep. Commit. Stick with something until you get really good.

Focus on simplicity, not the shiny new object.

Find contentment where it matters.

Take joy in the simple.

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This post was previously published on Musings of a Half-Wit and is republished on Medium.

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