We need to decide on our indecisiveness

On a random weekday, my best friend texted me. He was stuck on a decision and wanted to talk about it. His dilemma was simple on the surface. He had to choose between going home or staying back at his workplace. I read his options, shared my opinion, and thought the confusion was over. Half an hour later, he was telling me the consequences. If he went home, he knew he would relax for a while and start working. Worst case, he would just procrastinate and feel guilty. If he stayed back, he would sit there unable to focus because he was doing it for the past few hours. Probably, sitting there he would wonder if resting at home would have made him more productive later. After an entire hour of agonizing over this, he finally chose the exact thing he wanted to do in the very beginning. He realized he had wasted an hour.

A few days later, a very similar thing happened. I was going to meet a childhood friend. We easily decided on the day and the time. I then asked her to pick a place. She had a list of options. Should we go to a cafe? Which cafe? Should we attend a workshop? Should we just walk in nature? or a hike? or a long drive? She could not choose one easily. These two incidents made me think. How often are we doing this in our daily lives? We stand in front of very basic choices and struggle to commit. This hesitation is not just a random habit. We are living in a time with too many options. 

We often think having options makes us free. However, it only makes us indecisive, in most cases. 

When we face multiple options, our brains treat them as a heavy burden. We worry about what we might miss out on. We think that an unchosen option might have been much better. This endless comparison destroys our actual satisfaction. Schwartz et al. (2002) studied this. They separated people into two distinct groups. Some people settle for an option that simply meets their basic needs. The researchers called them satisficers. Others feel forced to evaluate every single possibility before deciding. These are the maximizers. The study found that people who look for the absolute best choice end up miserable. They experience more regret and self-blame. Even when they make a great choice, their satisfaction is less. (As I write this, I can think of a lot of people who would fit into this category!) They are too busy thinking about the alternative options they left behind. Maybe the more the merrier is not that merrier, I guess. Chernev et al. (2015) showed that having too many options directly causes mental exhaustion and decision paralysis.

We often try to solve this paralysis by relying on what we call our gut feeling. We think our instincts will guide us to the right choice. But we rarely question where this gut feeling comes from. Our decision making is heavily shaped by our conditioning. We are conditioned to seek the highest productivity, the perfect aesthetic, or the most socially approved outcome. We unknowingly learn these norms over time. Eventually, these conditioned responses become so automatic that we mistake this social conditioning for our natural instinct. Research by Evans & Stanovich (2013) explains how our brains use dual processing. One system is fast and automatic, while the other is slow and analytical. We often believe the fast system is our pure intuition. In reality, this fast system is loaded with learned biases and cultural conditioning. We feel a pull toward a certain cafe or a specific task and call it instinct. Most of the time, it is just our brain quickly recalling what is currently popular or what avoids guilt (or FOMO?). We are not making a free choice. We are just following some unwritten script.

We have access to more things than ever before. Yet we remain deeply unsatisfied. We convince ourselves that we are just keeping our options open to find the perfect fit. I do not know who we are lying to. This endless openness just keeps us stuck in one place. I find it difficult to decide things sometimes too. But I have realized something very specific recently. When I struggle and text my best friend for advice, I usually already know the answer. I have already made the decision in my head. I do not need a logical list of pros and cons. I am just afraid to act on the decision alone. I am looking for moral support. I want someone to hear my choice and validate it against all the other options. Our real struggle is not many options. Our struggle is the refusal to accept whatever we choose. We need to decide on our indecisiveness. We have to let go of the perfect choice, make a decision and live with it.

References

Chernev, A., Böckenholt, U., & Goodman, J. (2015). Choice overload: A conceptual review and meta-analysis. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25(2), 333–358. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2014.08.002

Evans, J. S. B., & Stanovich, K. E. (2013). Dual-process theories of higher cognition: Advancing the debate. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(3), 223–241. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612460685

Schwartz, B., Ward, A., Monterosso, J., Lyubomirsky, S., White, K., & Lehman, D. R. (2002). Maximizing versus satisficing: Happiness is a matter of choice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(5), 1178–1197. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.5.1178