The other day I went to Best Buy to look at digital cameras. They offered over fifty choices. My brain fried in ten minutes. I left without buying.
I wanted to make the best choice. I couldn’t make any choice.
Then over to Safeway to pick up cheese for Sandy. Do I want loaf, block, sliced, spread, string, grated, or shredded? In Cottage, Colby, Cheddar, White Cheddar, Extra Sharp Cheddar, Sharp Cheddar, Medium Cheddar, Swiss, Gouda, Mozzarella, Jack, or Pepper Jack? In regular, reduced fat, 2%, or light? And no sodium, low sodium, or regular sodium? Packaged in 8 ounces, 16 ounces, or 32 ounces?
Aww, hell.
Sociologist Alvin Toffler has a name for this madness: overchoice. Overchoice is the point where the cost of sorting through more choices is greater than the benefit these choices provide. Too many choices. Too much work to figure things out.
We live in the Age of Overchoice. “For most of recorded history,” writes Harvard Psychologist Daniel Gilbert, “people lived where they were born, did what their parents had done, and associated with those who were doing the same. Millers milled, Smiths smithed, and little Smiths and little Millers married whom and when they were told…But the agricultural, industrial and technological revolutions changed all that, and the explosion of personal liberty has created a bewildering array of options, alternatives, choices, and decisions that our ancestors never faced.”1
Life isn’t as simple as it was in the olden days when Millers milled and Smiths smithed. Now more than ever, I’ve got to be more decisive. I have to work harder to avoid analysis-paralysis.
Last post we discussed the killer word: decide. Decide sounds like suicide and homocide because it requires we kill our options. And options are everywhere. We live in a zombie apocalypse of overchoice, options lurching toward us from every direction. The only way to live is to shoot and slash.
1Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness (New York: Vintage Books, 2005), p. 259.
