Whatever You Want
While I admire the sentiment behind the phrase: "you can do whatever you want," I don't think it makes us happy in the long run.
I get it. We want our children, students, spouses, friends, etc. to know that we support them no matter what decision they make. We want them to be happy. If your child wants to go to a top tier university, give her that choice. The world is your oyster, and it only matters what you make of it. However, at what point are we just setting ourselves up to fail?
This idea isn't new, but not everyone seems to be aware of the problem.
The Problem
Designers know it. The New York Times knows it. Scientists know it. Even Costco knows it. What do they all know that the average person does not?
They know that too many choices lead to inaction. There was a study (as laid out in the The New York Times article - and very briefly laid out here) where participants were asked to make a choice in two circumstances 1) with 24 choices of jam, and 2) with six choices of jam. Participants made a choice more often when given fewer choices. To drive the point home:
That study "raised the hypothesis that the presence of choice might be appealing as a theory," Professor Iyengar said last year, "but in reality, people might find more and more choice to actually be debilitating."
We even tend to make "bad" choices, which lead to fear in making future choices. This comes back to lack of perspective. In our own minds, we paralyze ourselves with choices that we should have made, and worrying too much about "what could have been." If you put things into perspective, a) you never could have predicted how things were going to turn out (it's a gift and curse of being able to look into the past, but not the future), b) unless you go taking home two of everything, you'll never know the actual impact of the "bad" decision you made (only what is in your imagination), and c) just take a minute to think about how much worse everything could have been.
The Choices
When it comes to college, career, and even love choices, maybe we shouldn't give ourselves so many options. We like to think that we are in control of our own destinies, masters of our own domains. In reality, even with all of the choices in the world, we confine ourselves to only one choice: not making a choice at all. Wouldn't you agree that inaction is worse than sitting by idly? Sure, you're bound to make mistakes, and even fail along the way. That's life.
What do we do about this?
Costco has gotten it down to a science. They take toilet paper very seriously. They built an entire laboratory and testing equipment to compare ply strengths and irritability. What's the result? We feel more confident as consumers, and we buy more in quantity and in frequency of trips to Costco. We trust Costco's carefully curated choices.
Google, Yelp, Quora, etc. etc. They all curate their content, too. We're getting the best of what they have to offer, and we're generally okay with that. As an aside, I remarked a while back that I would never trust another recommendation engine again. You might criticize me for double standards, or some such, but in reality, I am offering another perspective. I tend to like a lot of choices so that I can make detailed and informed decisions, so I'm speaking more generally now. But again, what's my point? Yes, I'm getting to that.
The Solution
What if we were to offer curated choices for more things? Dating, marriage, career paths, colleges, etc. For some things, we already have our curators..
- dating/marriage - friends, family, communities
- career - career counselors, mentors
- college - guidance counselors, parents
Thinking big for a moment, a couple of those markets already have solutions, or half-solutions, and there are many more markets I haven't even begun to think about yet. I think curated choices for markets has the potential to disrupt many markets. We have half-solutions to solve many of these problems.
Tying all of this back into happiness and finally making decisions, there's a lot we can do as individuals to help those around us. We don't necessarily need flashy websites and apps to solve our choice dilemmas. We can go to our friends and family for recommendations. You don't need to make a decision on your own, and I'm not suggesting that others make your decisions for you, but at least they can narrow your scope. And I'll leave you with a quote from Pirates of the Caribbean:
The code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.
Seriously, go watch Dan Gilbert's TED Talk at 17:32, if you haven't already. Here is a transcript of that section:
Now, you have exactly the same problem when you shop for a stereo. You go to the stereo store, you see two sets of speakers -- these big, boxy, monoliths, and these little, sleek speakers, and you play them, and you go, you know, I do hear a difference: the big ones sound a little better. And so you buy them, and you bring them home, and you entirely violate the décor of your house. And the problem, of course, is that this comparison you made in the store is a comparison you'll never make again. What are the odds that years later you'll turn on the stereo and go, "Sounds so much better than those little ones," which you can't even remember hearing.