Pick Your Choices

A path to less regrets, and more fulfillment

In my last post, I outlined the context to a presentation I gave to a cohort of co-workers at my company which I titled, “Finding Yourself in a Complex World.” In that presentation, I touched on a philosophical concept that has become known as “The Paradox of Choice.” For the life of me I can’t remember what podcast I was listening to where this term came up but as soon as I heard the definition of it, I instantly related to it.

The phrase originated with an American psychologist by the name of Barry Schwartz, who wrote a book called the “Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less.” The premise of the book gets into how everyday decisions, both big and small, have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming abundance of choice with which we are presented.

With the rise of social media and technology as a whole, we have so much more awareness of what is out there in the world. We have access to so many more goods and services. So many options. So many choices. The dating market, jobs, hobbies, vacations, places to eat…the list goes on. The problem is we aren’t benefiting from it as much as one would think.

One of the takeaways from Schwartz’s testing and analysis that he concludes in his book is that individuals reported decreased satisfaction in their outcomes as the number of options they were initially presented increased. Buyers had more remorse as they were given more choices. They were wondering if they made the right decision/s. As individuals were given more options to choose from, there were more variables in the equation that they had to weigh against other opportunity costs. There are definitely times when a clear winner is available. The 100% grass-fed grass-finished wild caught elk is on sale for $5.99 at Whole Foods. A steal. No regrets. But most of the time We are trying to make the best decisions with a finite set of resources, and those resources force us into compromises.

Schwartz describes two categories of people. Maximizers, individuals that seek the BEST option. These are typically individuals that will spend a considerable amount of time researching the market for whatever they are interested in, and make (what they would consider) extremely calculated decisions to get the most fulfillment out of the situation they were solving for.

“And his argument was not that there was anything sort of logically wrong with maximizing, but that we simply didn't have the cognitive resources to do it successfully. It was asking too much of us. And in a world where choice has proliferated the way the modern world has, it's easy to see how you'd spend your whole life looking for the best cereal and starve to death.” - Barry Schwartz

The other category of people, Schwartz labels, Satisficers. These are individuals who settle for a good enough choice. They know there is the potential that other items or options are potentially better, but they accept that given their parameters and desires, the decision they make will satisfy them. The other catch to being a Satisficer is looking for good enough and being able to notice better when it happens by accident.

Barry described this thought pattern in a podcast clip I listened to. He said, “So you're satisfied with cornflakes every morning, and then you stay at a friend's house, and they don't have cornflakes, they have something else, Cinnamon LIFE. You have it, and you say, ‘Oh, this is better than what I have.’ And so now you've got a new good enough cereal that's better than your old good enough cereal. And over the course of a life, you keep on escalating your standards as you encounter things that are better than the things that had been good enough before.”

I found the Maximizer’s description directly applicable to my life and my mindset. I was doing all this research and analysis to try and make the optimal decision with the pleather of options afforded to me, to get the best life experience, but I wasn’t feeling great after choosing a course of action, and wondering if there was a better life experience decision I should have made. Would that other podcast have given me more information? Would I have been happier watching a movie vs. online shopping for 90 mins? Should I try to listen to new songs to add to my playlist or stick to the ones I know I already like? Could I have spent that $500 in another way to be happier?

I really can only definitively speak for myself, but from my time studying human behavior and modeling economic theories, as humans, we naturally fall into the Maximizer category (though it is much more of a core aspect to American idealism and individualism, which is anecdotally what I have the most familiarity with). Without getting too far into the weeds on it, economic activity can typically be measured in the form of utility. This is a bit of a catch-all term, but it combines user satisfaction, enjoyment, fulfillment and overall benefit.

Food for Thought: There could be an argument made that human beings are irrational and actually don’t always maximize utility. Thus, we aren’t always utility maximizing individuals.

While there is some truth to that, my response would be that humans are susceptible to changing what they believe is most beneficial to them in certain moments. Think of how sporadic your thoughts are on a given day, or within a given hour. You constantly look back and wonder “What the heck was I thinking?” But in the moment, you don’t have hindsight to reference. You actually made the best choice you could mustard in that moment and it’s only in hindsight that you’re able to learn from how you did not achieve the desired outcome you were looking for with the decision you made. That’s all to say, you probably made (what YOU thought was) the best decision you could have at the time, and it’s a result of that decision that you were able to learn that that wasn’t that best decision.

So even if we don’t consciously identify as a Maximizer based on the definition Schwartz gives, our natural tendency towards utility optimization (making the most of a finite number of resources i.e. time, money, energy) puts us in that camp.

In another one of my previous articles I introduced the work of Bryan Johnson who wrote “My Goal Alignment Problem.” To recap again, the premise of the article is that the brain is very elusive, and without a guiding system or framework, your decision making will be sporadic.

This is to say, without a process to model your decisions off of, you’ll continually make choices that seem, and may even be, beneficial in the short term, but detrimental to your goals in the long term. So while seeking maximum utility moment to moment seems like an appropriate default, it’s actually paradoxically hurting you.

Since starting my new job, the habits and routines I had established during my days of unemployment were totally dismantled. And rightfully so. Onboarding and job responsibilities forced me to restructure my days and new priorities floated to the top of my agenda. My prior unemployed day catered to my ardor of consuming a wide variety of knowledge content. I wasn’t really forced to make trade-offs or hard choices when deciding what content I wanted to consume because my resource of time was plenty enough to share.

But as I got into the swing of things with my new job, I noticed that I was constantly anxious at night trying to decide what to do for the two hours I had for myself. People were still recommending to me multi-hour long podcasts to listen to. I had books I wanted to read. I had social media feeds I wanted to catch up on. Articles I outlined to write. And Youtube clips I wanted to watch. Oh, add in Boo man snuggles as well. All the content, not nearly enough time.

I was in a perpetual state of internal calculations trying to decide what choice would make the most sense. How should I spend my free time to maximize it? Most nights, almost none of the above really got accomplished. The classic saying, paralysis by analysis. I never committed to anything for the fear that it wasn’t the right decision. I was hungry for cereal but not willing to put any in a bowl for fear I would like another one more.

After listening to a podcast with the professor and author, Cal Newport, talking about the trend of rising distractions and shallow work/busy work in both the workplace and in schools, I had an idea. One of the concepts Cal Newport is known for his term “Deep Work.” Subsequently, he has a book called “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.” In it he outlines a scheduling technique he uses where he blocks out certain parts of his day for specific work. It helps him to focus in on that primary task the time is delegated for, and limit the cognitive workload associated with decision making.

I decided to take a play out of Cal’s playbook. I bought a glass whiteboard to put on the wall next to my desk that has the seven days of the weeks in columns across it. I wanted the visual accountability for myself. I wrote in blue, the fitness goals I had each morning. In red, I wrote the intellectual goals I had for both the morning and evenings. On Monday and Thursday I wrote “read”, on Tuesday and Friday I wrote, “write”, and on Wednesday and Saturday I wrote “podcast.” Sunday was reserved only for church.

It’s only been about three weeks since I commenced this practice, but it has been such a great change. For starters, it eliminated a lot of ‘choices’ I was finding myself contemplating at night and allowed me actually to look forward to whatever was on the schedule. Like I said earlier, it also makes me more accountable to myself because I wrote I would do something and I’m a stickler for holding my word. Even if it’s to myself.

Though this is not a productivity post, the simple act of devoting 30 minutes to an hour of an activity two times a week will ultimately allow you to accomplish more. I’m not telling myself I need to publish an article every time I sit down to write. But if I never sit down to write I can’t expect an article to magically appear. In the three weeks of following this plan, I’ve wrote two articles. I’ve been entertained/informed from more podcast than I had in the last few months, and I’m getting more pages read in the books on my nightstand.

On the top of my journal I wrote this phrase, “Be present with your sacrifice.” It’s a reminder to me that time and attention are our scarcest resources. Being present with your sacrifice entails understanding that there is an opportunity cost to your thoughts. We can only have one thought at a time. While we think we have the capability to multitask that’s a bit of a myth. What we are really doing is dual/multi processing, and task switching quickly between the tasks you’re giving energy too.

“Attention isn’t free. It’s the most valuable thing you spend.”

With this understanding, it should comfort us to be ok with not being able to do it all. Accept your limitations, but then choose your sacrifice. This mindset shift helps to alleviate the feeling that you’ll one day have a hold on things. Or that you need to maximize in order to feel joy. Though it feels a bit nerve wracking at first, you start to be ok with knowing that you won’t get to everything and you won’t pick the best option. It brings you more into your present, and keeps your from frantically trying to get to a future time/feeling that is destined to be elusive and fleeting or stuck in perpetual regret with your decisions. Decide ahead of time what you’re willing to fail at. What you’re willing to just be satisfied with. Accept that. Attention is your most prized resource. Don’t let the world of choices distract you from being present with the life you get to live.