Overcome the Inability to Make a Decision by Reducing Options

Note: This article is based on a piece by Vanessa Van Edwards, in which she discusses the benefits of narrowing down your options.

There is a well-known set of experiments related to choosing the best jam. Consumer Reports, developed in the 1980s, reported and based on the opinion of a panel of taste experts to decide which strawberry jams tasted better. The end result was published in Consumer Reports.

A few years later, a University of Virginia psychiatrist named Timothy Wilson repeated the experiment to see if the students would choose the same types as the experts. He drew five random samples from the list and asked the students to classify them. Surprisingly, the students' opinions agreed with a high degree (0.55) of the experts' choices.

This is great. The students are just as good at tasting as the experts. However, Wilson then asked a second group of students to choose their favorite jam and explain the reason for this preference. This time, the agreement between the students and the experts was weak, with a score of (0.11) only.

This experience tells us that when we think a lot about our choices, we make the wrong choice. As the American psychologist Barry Schwartz believes, “reducing the number of options gives better results,”.

And this is due to several reasons:

1. When we have multiple choices, we make worse decisions.
2. Having too many options causes impotence, which prevents us from making decisions.
3. Most importantly, we spend time thinking about the choices we didn't make, rather than being happy with the choices we did make, as the more options we have, the more we feel like we've "missed the opportunity."

I learned how this applies to my own life the hard way

I used to offer our interns over 20 "special project" options. Special projects are areas that interest teens and we need help with. An example is the "Special Editor Project" in which interns email the editors of popular education magazines.

Another example is the Special Radio Project. An eloquent teen acts as our spokesperson in radio interviews. When I presented them with 20 options, it took the teens a long time to decide. They usually emailed me asking about the pros and cons of each option, with a significant decrease in the selection rate, so the trainees would email us after for several weeks saying they had made the wrong decision because they were thinking of a project other than the one they chose.

So I decided to limit myself to only three options, and then give them other options to choose the areas of their next special projects. Now the trainees are making decisions very quickly because there are only three options, so they will not feel that they have missed any other opportunity.

Think of the choices we give our clients and their family members. Which of the following ten cities should we choose for vacation? Do they want spaghetti, eggs, burgers, fish, or mac and cheese for dinner? We have the luxury of choice, which is good for us, yet offering fewer choices to ourselves or others enables us to make better decisions, makes our lives easier, and helps us feel like we're not missing out on so much.

Too many options

We love to choice because it makes us feel well-being as it makes us think that we can change our minds later if we make a wrong decision. In any case, Schwartz cites an example in his book that looks at mutual investment funds offered by an employer, so it is undoubtedly in the employee's interest to join a program. If he refuses to participate, he forfeits up to $5,000 annually in employer compensation.

Also, for every ten additional mutual funds offered by the employer, the participation rate drops by 2%, so why should people turn down the offer when they have more options? Because the presence of many options causes an inability to make a decision.

There are 175 salad dressings in local stores nearby, but I only tried four. The reason I tried two of them was that they were in the fridge at home. The only time I tried to buy another kind of salad dressing, I needed clarification. I spent 20 minutes looking at the bottles.

Finally, I bought one that looked good but soon realized it tasted awful when I got home, so I poured it over my salad, and before I tried it, I started thinking about whether I should buy the ginger dressing instead.

I felt more accessible when I limited my options. I also now offer fewer choices to those around me, I get only positive responses, and thanks to that, I removed half of the products from my website, and sales went up in all areas.

In conclusion

Offer fewer choices, limit your options as much as possible, and you'll make better decisions for everyone.