10 Quotes on Why Too Many Choices Can Make It Harder To Choose

By Somali K Chakrabarti

 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could.

ROBERT FROST in The Road Not Taken

Life is all about the choices we make. Time and again, we come across situations when we must choose one option over the other. Much like multiple choice questions, of the many given alternatives, we need to select the one, which under the given circumstances seems to be the best, correct or most optimum as compared to the others. Though there is something very exciting and liberating about the ability to choose and most of the times we crave for choice, yet, the decision to choose can be stressful too.

 

Having more options does not necessarily help us make better choices

Choosing has infiltrated every aspect of our lives – from shopping, to dressing, to eating, to investing, to traveling. Sometimes, a plethora of choices makes it all the more difficult to make the best choice, and we suffer from a choice overload.

In a shop filled with a varied range of goods where too many brands vie for attention, it sometimes becomes confusing to choose and in such cases we mostly tend to stick to our preferred brands. With the increase in the number of choices, even after we have made a purchase, we often have a niggling doubt that we may have left out some options that might have been more suitable. That feeling itself can reduce the happiness derived from the purchase.

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“We need to live in the moment, appreciate what we have and not think about all the other things that we could choose instead,” says Prof. Barry Schwartz , Author of the book Paradox of Choices

 

Ten Quotes on why abundance of choice may not lead to the right selection

• When people have no choice, life is almost unbearable … But as the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear … the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. ~Barry Schwartz  in Paradox of Choices

• In a world where we have too many choices and too little time, the obvious thing to do is just ignore stuff. ~ Seth Godin

• You can be crippled by too many choices especially if you don’t know what your goals are. ~ Chip Kidd [Tweet this]

• Too many choices can overwhelm us and cause us to not choose at all. For businesses, this means that if they offer us too many choices, we may not buy anything.  ~ Sheena Iyengar

• When people are overwhelmed by choice and when they are anxious about it, they often turn to denial, ignorance and wilful blindness. ~ Renata Salecl 

• When you give people too many choices it makes them hesitate and not buy stuff. ~ Guy Kawasaki

• When people have too many choices, they make bad.  ~ Thom Browne

• So many roads, so many detours, so many choices, so many mistakes. ~ Sarah Jessica Parker

• The expansion of choice has become an explosion of choice. ~ Sheena Iyengar

• Freedom of choice is also freedom to decide when you do not want to choose. ~ Simona Botti

Too much of anything is just as bad as too less of anything. The same holds good for choices as well.  So, as the number of choices increase, it may help to become choosier about choice and cut down on our choices to make better decisions.

How do you deal with too many choices?

 

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