Almost every morning I face the same dilemmas. Whether I should wake my wife up with a kiss or let her sleep in longer. Should I get up or just hit the snooze button? And that’s even before I’ve had my first cup Coffee.
Our everyday life is full of so-called trivial decisions. People often feel silly when contemplating low-stakes decisions, but research has shown that there are logical reasons for feeling this way. When you understand why small decisions make you feel so stressed, you can learn what you can do about it.
First, sometimes the sheer number of options overwhelms us as we find it difficult to compare and contrast the options. economist fought for this idea for a long time that it’s better to have more choices. But in 2000, US psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Leeper challenged that idea.
In one of their studies They set up a jam testing table in a supermarket. Far more consumers bought a jam when they had fewer options. Almost a third (30 percent) of customers bought a jam when the stand had six flavors, but only 3 percent of customers bought jam when there were 24 flavors.
The book by US psychologist Barry Schwartz builds on these findings The paradox of choice: why less is lessargues that an abundance of choices can frighten people.
People often lack the expertise, or believe they lack the expertise, to properly evaluate their options. For example when making a financial decision. And when you have goals, the lack of certainty about how strictly you intend to stick to them is likely to give you a headache.
A vague goal of “save more” won’t give you clarity when a friend suggests going out to eat and your stomach is growling.
Even some of the decisions that we call trivial may actually be so have emotionally high stakes. Deciding what to wear to a date, for example, is probably not just about fashion.
While each factor is enough to create stress when all factors are combined afraid of the decision is only amplified.
It’s your personality
Another line of research has focused on the link between people’s decision-making strategies and well-being. Researchers have identified two main decision-making strategies: Maximization and Satisfaction.
Maximize is a tendency to try to find the best option. Satisficing, a term coined by Nobel laureate Herbert Simon, is a strategy that ends once an acceptable option is found.
Maximization and satisfaction have been associated with personality traits. There are people who tend to maximize and others who tend to be content.
Schwartz and his colleagues found a negative correlation between maximization tendency and life satisfaction.
Maximizers (compared to satisficers) were also more likely to experience regret after the decision. One explanation for this is that maximizers are always mulling over what they could have done and how they could have made a better decision.
To be clear, the study did not examine major life decisions related to marriage or health, instead focusing on everyday choices (although similar findings more serious medical decisions were reported).
Make it a habit
decisions can be mentally exhausting. Sometimes everyday decisions feel difficult because you suffer from decision fatigue.
WilliamJamesone of the greatest thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries Habits help us deal with this complexity. Habits take away the need to think. Investing your time in building habits can keep you from thinking about everyday decisions.
The insights of William James have inspired many contemporary researchers. An idea popularized by psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s book, Think fast and slow, is the idea that we use two different information processing mechanisms, system one and system two. System one is unconscious, fast, intuitive. It requires little effort. System two is purposeful thinking.
Waking up at the same time every morning, kissing my wife, and then making coffee has become a habit that has helped me not to overthink these activities. I let my System One do as much as I can, at least until I have my first cup of coffee.
US writer Merlin man said: “Thinking can be the enemy of action”. While I’m not sure I would fully agree with that, his words do align with a lot of psychology’s findings.
Herbert Simon came up with the idea of satisficing because he believed humans did it impaired cognitive and other abilities (like memory and attention). Thinking too much — for example, whether or not to exercise today — can be stressful and frustrate the intention to do so.
You must decide how to invest your resources (whether cognitive, emotional, or physical). Investing them in thinking about exercise can drain the energy you need to exercise.
When it comes to our day-to-day decisions, reducing the number of options can also help simplify the process. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was well known for wearing similar outfits almost daily (jeans and a turtleneck or a t-shirt), partly to make the decision-making process easier.
It’s about accepting that you have limited “decision juice” and being aware of how you’re using it. Reducing choices, developing good habits, and letting our so-called System 1 take the lead can help us make our day-to-day decisions.
Janiv Hanochprofessor of decision science, University of Southampton
This article is republished by The conversation under a Creative Commons license. read this original article.
