Dozy Writes

^{Read time: 8 minutes}

Have you ever stood in front of the marmalade selection in the supermarket and spent what felt like hours trying to decide which one to buy because there were so many choices?

Do you want a supermarket’s own brand or will you splash out on an expensive brand? Dundee or Seville? Thick cut or shredless? Extra bitter or sweet? Lime or grapefruit? That one’s easy – anything except grapefruit, it’s vile.

Oh and how do you feel about adding some whisky into that marmalade? 

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the number of choices, you are not alone. In fact, the issue of overchoice in preserves was taken so seriously that there was a study conducted in 2000 known as the ‘Jam Experiment’ ^[1].

I don’t want to turn this post into a scientific study so I’ll paraphrase the findings. Basically, people were less likely to buy when there were 24 different types of jam available than when there were only six options available.

In addition, people who did buy some jam felt happier with their choice when the options were limited.

Quite simply, the decision was made easier by having less to choose from whereas too many options left them wondering if they’d made the right choice.

That said, having more than one choice is a good thing when it comes to being happy with your preserve purchase as I discovered recently when I stayed with a friend.

Lady Marmalade

My friend is a bit of a marmalade connoisseur – some might say an addict.

Disaster struck one evening when she realised that she didn’t have a spare jar of marmalade in the cupboard as she had thought. We hastily made our way to the local corner shop because there was no way we could possibly have toast for breakfast the next morning without any marmalade. 

When we arrived at the corner shop, we discovered that there was only one type available – Robertsons Golden Shredless.

My friend declared it the kind of marmalade that you enjoy before your palate matures, but it was deemed better than no marmalade at all so, after paying a small fortune for it, we had it the next morning.

I must confess that I enjoyed it, particularly for the sense of nostalgia it brought with it. She, on the other hand, was less enamoured.

Her sense of satisfaction was hampered by there only being one choice, particularly as that sole choice wasn’t one she would have normally selected.

So we can agree that having more than one choice is good but I did wonder how difficult a decision it would have been if we had gone somewhere with multiple options.

I suspect we might have been there a while.

Overchoice is everywhere

It’s not just marmalade and jam causing us problems. A trip to the ice cream parlour becomes an exercise in quick-fire decision making.

Pick your flavour, pick your container type – if it’s a cone, pick which type of cone, pick your toppings. All while the queue of people behind you waits impatiently. It’s like some kind of strange exercise in testing how you cope under pressure.

It’s the same with sandwich shops. I end up having the same thing every time because I get bored, confused and overwhelmed when considering all of the options. I have to mentally prepare myself for the tirade of questions before I enter the shop.

Overchoice seems to be at its worst in the supermarket. Every shopping trip brings forth a hundred different decisions to be made. Which cereal, coffee, vegetables and milk to buy?

Cheap options, gourmet options, ethical options, organic options. The possibilities go on – unless you’re a vegetarian in Spain in which case your choices are extremely limited because everything seems to have ham in it. 

A vegetarian in Spain

Speaking of Spain, I once went out for lunch with my Spanish friend in a small town in the mountains of Spain. I asked if there was anything vegetarian on the menu and the waitress looked at me in horror as if I’d suggested that we sacrifice her for lunch instead.

Undeterred, I asked for salad and fries only to be served with a massive plate of fries with a sliced tomato on the side. To be fair, the tomato was seasoned beautifully.

It turns out that being a vegetarian in Spain is a great way to address choice overload.

Overchoice when travelling

The issues with too many choices extends into every aspect of our lives. A couple of years ago, my partner A.P and I went interrailing through France and Spain – it was great fun and a fantastic way to see lots of different places.

We pre-booked our first hotel in Paris a couple of months in advance but decided that we would be spontaneous thereafter, deciding only a day or two in advance which town or city to visit next.

After the first two weeks of staying at a variety of places for a couple of days at a time, I started to tire of constantly making decisions. Simply deciding which place to go to next was tiring enough without then searching through hundreds, if not thousands, of possible accommodation options.

There was too much choice. Eventually I worked out a regime of systematic filtering to reduce the options to a more manageable selection but it was draining and impacted my level of enthusiasm a little.

Choosing the familiar option

It’s easy to understand why we stay with the same old options rather than trying something new. We know what we’re going to get when we choose the familiar option and we don’t have to think about it.

When I travel in the UK I tend to stay with a particular chain of budget hotels because I know the bed is comfortable, the shower is good and it saves me from searching through hundreds of possible places on a booking website. 

Similarly, despite the fact that many of us can travel pretty much anywhere in the world, it’s understandable that a vast number of us want to return to the same place on holiday, year after year. It gives us a break from making decisions for a while.

Choice = decisions

What I find particularly fascinating is that, despite our desire for choice, I’m not convinced that we always enjoy making decisions. 

How often do we pass responsibility over to someone else, asking them to decide because, for whatever reason, we don’t want to?

At one time, I worked for an organisation that served a multitude of different communities. Each area varied substantially resulting in a constant agenda to push for community decision making, thereby allowing each community to feel more empowered. 

Guess what? The communities hated it because what they really wanted was for somebody else to make the decision so they could moan about it. They didn’t particularly want to take responsibility for making what were sometimes momentous decisions.

There are, of course, many benefits of having choices. It gives us autonomy and some degree of freedom but there is usually a tipping point where too many choices can lead to us feeling overwhelmed and dissatisfied with our choices.

Brain shut down

There is a phenomenon known as decision or analysis paralysis where we become frozen into inaction when faced with too many choices. It confuses us to the point where our brains can eventually shut down and we end up not making a choice at all. 

Takeaway orders remain incomplete in the baskets of our favourite food delivery apps as we make ourselves a slice of toast instead – so much easier than continuing to peruse the staggering array of options. 

It seems that the wealth of choice we have available is complicating our lives rather than enhancing them.

How do we stop choice overload?

It’s not always possible to reduce the number of options being offered to us but we can learn to apply our own filters instead.

Let’s return to the ice cream scenario. Despite there sometimes being as many as 20 to 30 flavours to choose from, I always opt for vanilla.

Stop your groaning and bear with me. It’s a classic, underrated flavour and it’s always available wherever you go.

Vanilla ice cream, in a cone, with a chocolate flake.

This choice has served me well over the years and provides me with immense satisfaction. 

I deviated from this once when a silver tongued charmer in London talked me into getting a salted caramel ice cream. It was divine but I found it too sickly to finish and ended up giving the remainder of it to A.P. I was gutted because I felt that I’d missed out on my trusted vanilla flavour.

I have applied similar filters to other choices in life. When I bought an old fishing cottage some years ago, I decided that all the furniture would be second hand. Aside from the fact that it didn’t feel right to bring something shining and new into the house, I liked the idea that I would be restricted by whatever was available at the time I needed it. 

Make one overarching choice

Naturally, like everything in life, this is a work in progress but I have found that making an overarching choice to live differently has helped the other choices become easier. 

For the last three years, I have chosen not to have a permanent residence and, as I don’t want to have lots of things in storage, I am limited in what I can keep. When I buy anything, it has to be small, lightweight and absolutely essential.

In addition, my choices have been restricted because of my limited budget – there’s much less chance of choice overload when you don’t have much money.

We will all have different methods for reducing options to a more manageable level – some by our own choice and some that will be imposed on us.

Whatever way we choose to make our decisions, it’s worth remembering that, for the most part, things tend to turn out OK regardless of what we choose.

And if, in hindsight, it turns out that our choice wasn’t the best one, we can either change it or learn from it for the next time.

Have you had any issues with choice overload? I’d love to hear your thoughts and if you have found any practical ways to navigate this modern problem.

References

1. Iyengar, S. S., & Lepper, M. R. (2000). When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(6), 995–1006. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.6.995