Narrowing Down Our Options

I was in my favorite deli recently, and someone had taken a couple of drinks out of these two giant drink coolers that cover almost an entire wall in this deli. As they were walking towards the counter, I said, “Wow, they have everything under the sun here.” With that, the person looked back, saw things that they wanted more than what they had, and returned a few items and took a few more out.

It reminded me of how when we have too much variety, when there are too many options, it can make it hard to make a decision. In that case, the person returned one or two drinks for something else, but in some cases, people, when confronted with too many choices, don’t make any decision at all. That is true whether we’re choosing drinks or preserves and jams in a store or even making decisions about what retirement options to choose at work.

Here are three things you can do to avoid having so much variety that it gets overwhelming. Number one is to decide in advance what you want. That way, when you go to the options, you already have an idea of how to narrow down those choices. Number two, when you have too many options, try to narrow down the category of the thing that you want. In the example of a drink display, if it’s iced tea, focus on the iced teas; if it’s a diet drink, focus on those. And third, once you’ve made a decision, move on. Sometimes when we start to second guess ourselves, that’s when things can get confusing. There will always be more options in life ahead of us, so be happy with the choice that you’ve made.