Where do you want to go? I donāt know, where do YOU want to go?
The above scenario is most assuredly something that many of us experience on a regular basis. For me and my family, choosing activities, places to go to eat, or even selecting a film to rent, are all very... frustrating. The biggest dilemma we encounter, though, is theĀ āwhere to you want to eatā dilemma.
Most of the time, I genuinely donāt care where weāre going, and when I do care, I will speak my choice from the beginning. I am a very picky eater, but wherever we end up going, Iām pretty sure I can find something to eat. (You know the person who always orders a burger or fried chicken strips at a new restaurant? That would be me.) My main choices are usually things that most restaurants already have on their menus.
In theory, this shouldnāt be a problem, right? You have complete freedom to select what you want to eat, and Iāll just go along with it. However, you seem to feel the same way--āletās just EAT.ā
As a result, Iāve come up with a few rules I usually go by that help me make up my mind and resolve this ambiguous situation.
1) I have particular categories of food/restaurants I do lean toward. If someone I ask says they donāt know where to go, I list a few categories such as Chicken, Burgers, or Seafood, along with fast service or sit-down restaurants. Based on their choices, I will try to recommend one or two places for them to choose from.
2) If Iām visiting a friend in their hometown, I tell them to give me two options, and I pick one. If a friend is visiting me in my hometown, I offer a few options of my own. This way, the people recommending the options are people whoāre familiar with the area and the quality of the food available. One can also assume that the recommendations are likely ones preferred by the other person.
Iāve read a couple of articles here and there that bring up the idea that having too many options can be a very stressful situation and bring less satisfaction. One article on The Guardian (link to article here) mentions, āWhen there are lots of alternatives to consider, it is easy to imagine the attractive features of alternatives that you reject that make you less satisfied with the alternative that youāve chosen. Increased choice, then, can make us miserable because of regret, self-blame and opportunity costsā
I have experienced such stress many times, and I can relate to the idea that some selections just feel less satisfying, because you wonder if you would have actually preferred a different choice.
This is actually pretty funny to me, in a way, because where life is concerned, I usually prefer having as many options open as possible. Closing options actually can cause me stress. At the same time, when I have opted to close certain options, it has freed me from worrying about whether or not my future options will be more or less satisfactory.
For instance, I love having tons of software options. However, when I have multiple options for, say, video editing, I can spend an hour just figuring out which one would be better to use. So, I choose one that I default to. This allows me to, for the most part, keep my options open, but at the same time, I remove those options from the choice list unless something comes up that my current option cannot accomplish. This reduces my stress and also makes working on tasks so much more efficient.
The article later brings up the issue in dating web sites or apps, and it brings up that so many choices can be quite problematic. How much easier would it be to make a choice if there were only two men or women for you to choose from? (Disregarding the millions of other users.) You might date them and either choose one or none at all, but at least it would have been less of a strain and less disheartening than, say, going on a hundred dates and, because you know there are other options, moving past ones without the perfect features and eventually realizing you wasted all that time and are still without a partner.
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