The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less Paperback – January 18, 2005

 "The fact that some choice is good doesn't necessarily mean that more choice is better. As I will demonstrate, there is a cost to having an overload of choice. As a culture, we are enamored of freedom, self-determination, and variety, and we are reluctant to give up any of our options. But clinging tenaciously to all the choices available to us contributes to bad decisions, to anxiety, stress, and dissatisfaction-- even to clinical depression."

~ Barry Schwartz from The Paradox of Choice

Barry Schwartz is a Professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore College and this book is packed with Big Ideas on how, as the sub-title suggests, "the culture of abundance robs us of satisfaction."

In short, we now have so many options that we're suffering.

"I believe we make the most of our freedoms by learning to make good choices about the things that matter, while at the same time unburdening ourselves from too much concern about the things that don't."

"We can imagine a point at which the options would be so copious that even the world's most ardent supporters of freedom of choice would begin to say, "enough already." Unfortunately, that point of revulsion seems to recede endlessly into the future."

Here are some of the Big Ideas:

1. Gratitude = happy with choices
2. Being Seduced - By branding. We all are.
3. Maximizers vs. Satisficers - Huge idea.
4. Perfectionism - Tends to go with maximizing.
5. Domain Specificity - Maximizing is domain specific.

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THE PARADOX OF CHOICE by Barry Schwartz
Four and Half Stars- Must Read for anyone interested in "decision making"

A fantastic book on why more is less (or less is more). It is a fantastic essay on how the culture of abundance robs us of satisfaction in life, and more importantly bring in depression. It shares enough case studies and examples of why more is less, and how to increase satisfaction life.

Key Idea: Giving people too many choices tends to lessen their satisfaction.
“Maximizers” are people who, given a choice, will exhaustively search all the options, seeking all possible information, in order to make the best possible choice. This behavior generally consumes a lot of time, and often leads to nagging doubts, perhaps where no one clear winner emerged.
“Satisficers” are those who settle for a choice that is “good enough” for them These people are generally happier with their choice, and spend less time choosing, leaving them free to enjoy other things.

Counterintuitive wisdom

1. We are better of if we embraced voluntary constrains of choice on our freedom of choice, instead of rebelling against in thme
2. We are better off when we choose good enough instead of seeking the best
3. Lower your expectations about the results of your decisions
4. We are better off if our decisions are irreverseable
5. We are better off if we paid less attention to what others do around us

Summary of the book by Chapter:
Lets go shopping: Every area of our life from the super market to the education market offers way too much choice.

New Choice: Filtering our extraneous information is the key function of consciousnesses.

Deciding and Choosing: Figure your goals out, rank them, evaluate options and their likelyhood to meet goals, pick winning option .
Growth of options and opportunities means decisions require more effort, mistakes are more likely and psychological ocnsequence of mistakes is more severe.

When Only The Best Will Do: When you seek and only the best will do you are a MAXIMIZER. When you seek the good enough and not worry about consequences you are a SATISFIER.
Maximizers tend to: make more product comparisons, take longer to decide, compare their decisions to others, experience more regret that others, feel less positive about their decisions.

Choice & happiness: Every choice we make is a testament to our autonomy. The choice of when to be a chooser may be the most important choice we have to make. The more control people have, the less helpless they feel, the less depressed they will be.
Time spent with dealing with choice is time spent away from being in life.
Some constrain can afford liberty, while freedom will bring enslavement, it is wise to choose the the constrains.

Missed opportunities: Examine opportunity costs - more the choices, we diminish our subjective experience of benefits, thus we are worse off.
When people have too many options and trade offs, they avoid making decisions options we consider usually suffer from companions with other options
One reason why maximizers are less happy, less satisfied with their lives, and more depressed than satisfiers is precisely because the taint of tradeoffs and opportunity costs washes out much that hshould be satisfying about the decisions they make.

The Problem of Regret: Two factors affect regret a) personal responsibility for the result b) how easily we can imagine the counter factual better alternative.
Regret looms more for the maximizer than the satisfier.

Everything suffers from Comparisons: Curse fof high expectations, curse of social comparisons due to race for status,
Maximizers are more concerned with social comparisons than satisfiers. Increasing available options seems to usually reduce satisfaction.

Whose Fault is it?:Helplessness induced by failure or lack of control causes depression. Depression more common when only the best will do.

What to do about Choice?:
1)Choose when to choose.- think of cost associated with decisions.
2) Be a chooser not a picker -
3)Satisfy more, maximize less
4)Think about opportunity costs of opportunity costs - dont be swayed by new and improved
5) Make decisions non reversible
6) Practice an attitude of gratitude
7)Regret less
8) Anticipate adaptation - focus on how things are as opposed to as they were
9) Control expectations
10) Avoid social comparisons
11)Learn to love constrains

This book is worth the read, to hammer home the point of embracing a satisfaction based life, and how to learn to love constrains. BUY THIS BOOK, which was voted as a TOP 10 book for the year by Business Week to understand why" less is more, and how to increase the satisfaction in your life."

Mahipal Lunia
www.TheRenaissancePath.com

Excellent book about making choices using a different approach. Tells us, in summary, that to maximize our choices, just find an option that satisfied you ---- and by being satisfied, it has been proven to maximize our results. Believe it or not, I just spoiled the entire book for you! That is all the book boils down to. However, it explains the science behind why being satisfied is the path to satisfactory maximization. It spends the entire book explaining why. But, it's very interesting! You will not regret reading it.

hrough this book , Barry has tried to explain some of the commonly felt shopping distresses. While most of them will sound familiar (have myself scratched my head in front of the toothpaste shelf and then picking up one at random, so much for all the millions spent on ads), Barry has brought out a psychological explanations behind the same. So at least i am reassured that I am not the only one facing such turmoil.

In terms of concepts I liked the positive versus negative language "discount on cash" vs "surcharge on credit". There are many occasions when I felt we were making the customer aware and doing a favour, not realising that using such a straight language may just be bad marketing.

The endowment effect is also a good insight for marketeers, bundle more and give an option for customers to remove than do the reverse.

However, as the book progresses, i felt too many concepts were being brought in, thus making me lose track of the same. And too many studies to support them - get confused too often between the correlation and causuality. By the last chapter, it almost reads like a gospel or a guide towards nirvana - satisfice more and maximise less. I am not sure that many would agree unless you are already a satisficer.

In summary, the book starts with an interest concept , but gets lost somewhere in between and shifts to a different orbit by the end.

A brilliant view of our complex world. We think we want more choice, but we are better off without it. If you enjoyed Freakanomics, you will enjoy this one too.