Choice is a luxury–at least it used to be.

Generally speaking, humans prefer to have more choices than less, thus ample opportunities are often a mark of privilege.

Yet, there comes a point when too many choices can actually be a pain and start to hinder our decision-making ability.

Take, for example, this all-too-common scenario:

It’s Friday evening. Xam and I have just ushered the kids to bed. We’ve loaded the dishwasher, swept the kitchen floor, and made an attempt to tidy up.

With relief, we plop ourselves down on the couch. Xam reaches for the remote.

“Let’s see what’s new on Netflix,” he suggests. I nod along indifferently.

Over an hour and several movie trailers later, we’re still deliberating, scrolling through endless options in every perceivable category.

Eventually, our interest wanes into utter fatigue–both from the long day and mind-numbing deluge of entertainment choices. Still without consensus, we call it a night. Another well-intentioned evening, squandered.

I bet you can relate.

You probably also know the desperate search for food when you’ve waited a little too long to eat. Yelp doesn’t help when ‘best burger near me’ yields 20+ joints within a 5-mile radius.

What is the problem with too many choices? Isn’t it a luxury to have thousands of flicks at our fingertips? Or dozens of restaurants close by, ready to serve up a juicy burger?

Less is more

As you’ve likely experienced, it’s hard to just ‘pick and choose’ when we’re presented with too many options. In addition to stalling us, excessive choices also affect our wellbeing–usually for the worst.

According to psychologist Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, “…there is a cost to having an overload of choice…clinging tenaciously to all the choices available to us contributes to bad decisions, to anxiety, stress, and dissatisfaction–even to clinical depression.”

With small matters, these negative side effects may be less pronounced. After all, it’s kind of fun to choose from 36 flavors of cheesecake or thousands of paint colors. The art of selection is arguably one of the best parts of the buying experience.

However, when it comes to more weighty decisions like where to live or what college to attend, too many choices can become an encumbrance rather than a convenience. Days–sometimes months–of deliberation can take a toll on our emotional state and ability to make a sound decision, often leading to decision fatigue.

Even when we do manage to pick from the myriad of choices, Barry argues that we’re less happy with it because we’re aware of the trade offs we had to make. Loss aversion prevents us from fully enjoying what we gained knowing that we’re losing out on something else.

At some point, choosing loses its fun factor. It becomes tiresome. Stressful. Harmful to our health. Evidently, we’re better off with less choices, not more.

So how do we combat choice overload?

1. Eliminate nonessential choices

First, we need to get rid of unnecessary decision-making.

Does it really improve our quality of life to have an encyclopedia full of breakfast cereals to choose from? Or more than ten thousand mutual funds to invest in?

No. They just create clutter.

By filtering out nonessential decisions, we can focus on what really matters.

Greg McKeown writes at length about this in his book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. Rather than doling equal attention to every issue in life, he encourages us to ask, “Which problem do I want?” and direct our time and resources toward solving those core issues.

Greg stresses the importance of “distinguishing the ‘trivial many’ from the ‘vital few’” so that we can better invest in opportunities that produce the greatest returns.

Streamlining our decision-making not only applies to the volume of decisions we take on (and the number of choices associated with those decisions) but also the frequency of choosing.

Have you noticed the rise of seasonal consumption? Retailers LOVE seasons. They take advantage of every opportunity to peddle season-specific products to spirited consumers.

Thanks to interior design preaching from HGTV and Pinterest, we’re convinced we need to revamp our decor every quarter and get different hand towels for every holiday.

If we can tune out arbitrary consumption signals and focus instead on universal, evergreen solutions, we’ll cut through the vast majority of buying decisions. And our wallets will thank us for it. Click To TweetIf we can tune out arbitrary consumption signals and focus instead on universal, evergreen solutions, we’ll cut through the vast majority of buying decisions. And our wallets will thank us for it.

As Barry puts it, “The choice of when to be a chooser may be the most important choice we have to make.”

2. Know what you do DON’T want

On a similar note, it’s often easier to find what we want by first deciding what we don’t want.

Ask a child, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” You’ll get anything from firefighter or teacher to princess or unicorn. Or even firefighting unicorn.

The scary thing is, the range of choices doesn’t really shrink as we get older.

“You can be anything you want” is a reality in our modern society as people get paid to do most anything, from resume writing to professional cuddling.

The more helpful question is, “Who do you NOT want to be?”

When entering my profession, I knew I didn’t want to be in sales. Filtering out commission-based jobs allowed me to concentrate on real financial planning opportunities that serves clients first. I sidestepped conventional entry points into the industry, passing up numerous offers so I can find the positions that best align with my personal conviction to help people.

Drawing ethical and professional boundary lines not only helps us find ideal opportunities quicker, it ensures the ones we ultimately land on match the kind of person we set out to be. Click To TweetI believe knowing who we don’t want to be is more important than the affirmative. Drawing ethical and professional boundary lines not only helps us find ideal opportunities quicker, it ensures the ones we ultimately land on match the kind of person we set out to be.

3. Let someone else pick

Another way to handle decision making is by delegating it. Pay someone else to do it–or at least to narrow the choices down to a more manageable level.

That is essentially what curation is and businesses offering curation as part of their model, like Stitch Fix, are crushing it.

Today, we’re more willing than ever to outsource decision making, even when it comes to very personal choices like the clothes we wear. We might pay a premium for someone to tell us what to do but it’s probably worth it.

Not surprisingly, most of the heavy lifting is done by technology these days. The biggest curator around is Google. And the best part? It’s free.

4. Go with ‘good enough’

If you can’t eliminate or delegate a decision and still feel stuck, at some point you just have to pick something and move on.

Of course, that’s easier said than done.

It’s hard to choose efficiently when the stakes seem high. Those stakes might be financial (it costs a lot) or physical (it’s strenuous to do). They could also be emotional, moral, social, even political.

Whatever the stakes, we usually make them out to be much higher than they really are. We place great emphasis on finding the best option, but rarely there is one. And to find it requires immense time, energy, and research.

So we agonize. Eventually, we may decide. But even after the fact, we’re prone to buyer’s remorse.

How do we escape this cycle?

We need to give ourselves permission to be mediocre, at least in some areas. We don’t need to shoot for perfect judgment all the time, or even most of the time.

We need to be OK with ‘good enough’ in making informed yet imperfect choices. And then we need to move on.

Necessary evils

At first blush, freedom of choice may seem like a great privilege. We like to hold our personal autonomy in high regard. But ironically, it can become a tyrant of our own invention.

If we’re not deliberate about fighting the tyranny of choice, we dilute the power of autonomy and forfeit a crucial part of our individuality. Click To TweetIf we’re not deliberate about fighting the tyranny of choice, we dilute the power of autonomy and forfeit a crucial part of our individuality.

Barry contends that, “The United States was founded on a commitment to individual freedom and autonomy, with freedom of choice as a core value. And yet…we do ourselves no favor when we equate liberty too directly with choice, as if we necessarily increase freedom by increasing the number of options available.”

Is this a valid conclusion?

You decide.

What are some of the ways you deal with choice overload? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!