Choices

Listening to Barry Schwartz's Less is More presentation from PopTech and during which I experienced an "a ha" moment, you know the one when you suddenly understand what is going on.

Barry had been talking for about 30 minutes on how the number of options made available to people actually decrease the likelihood of them making a choice (opportunity cost). Then he started talking about when every thing was worse then it was easy to have experiences that exceed expectations. Now it is very hard for people to have experiences that exceed expectations because our expectations are so high. Interesting.

"There is no excuses for failure in a world where choices are essentially infinite." - Barry Schwartz

Barry then provided us with a solution, anything that constrains people's choices is a benefit as it make things easier. Remember how you feel when you walk into a shop for the first time and they have 100/200/500/1000 different flavour's of ice cream. You feel anxious, what if I choose the wrong flavour. I see this all the time with my son, note to self; start limiting his choices. The anxiousness is increasing our stress levels.

I learnt that adding choices has a diminishing returns, so find the break even point and stick with it. However no choices at all is worse, you need some choices.

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