TOO Many Choices – a Blessing or a Curse?
Too many choices often leave us tired, confused, indecisive, and discontented.
All of us want more options, more choices, more varieties, and more alternatives before settling for any one amongst them. But what happens when we are served with too many choices?
In today’s tech-advanced world, in seconds we get thousands of options on a single click in every sphere of our life. We have so many alternatives that it becomes tough to process and compare the sheer amount of information; ultimately resulting in decision paralysis.
The bombardment of this extra information is so overwhelming that it often makes us disoriented, wandering and unsettled. We fear the risk of making the wrong choice. Even if we choose the perfect one, after a thorough analysis, we still suffer from discontentment because there’s always something that we miss about the option we have surrendered.
In short, extra choices not only make us perplexed overthinkers but also dissatisfied, thankless and hungry for more. We can’t fully accept and rejoice what we have and instead crave for more. We always look for more perfection, more features, more freebies, more discounts and the list goes on and on.
Barry Schwartz, PhD, a Swarthmore College psychologist and the author of ‘The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less’, says, “There’s a point where all of this choice starts to be not only unproductive but counterproductive – a source of pain, regret, guilt, worry about missed opportunities and unrealistically high expectations.”
Also, I believe by cutting down the unnecessary and unproductive options of choosing breakfast cereals, clothes and toothpaste, we could spare some extra time for nurturing ourselves.
Do you enjoy the luxury of many options that our generation has or face decision paralysis on having them? Do extra choices make you an overthinker or a better decision maker?
Food for thought! Think it, Feel it and Question it.
“Freedom of choice is also the freedom to decide when you do not want to choose.” – Simona
Fewer Choices, simpler options, better decision making. More choices, more stress on the mind to select the best out of available options, more time the mind takes to select, more calculations by the mind. Decision making is inversely proportional to the availability of choices. Well written!! People should take benefit of this article. Keeping sharing Shraddha Ji 🙂
Thank you, Sumit 🙂 Yes, u r right. Choices always bring more stress and waste our time.
Very true. More the choices, more the confusion, more the regret of not going for the right one.
Well written.
Thank u so much Varun. Ur appreciation means a lot 🙂