The best decision is the one we don’t have to make

Schwartz’s groundbreaking study on the personality differences of satisficers versus maximizers proved that just as happiness may be a matter of choice, choice may also be a matter of happiness.

How, and more importantly whether, we make choices influences, whether we are happy or not.

For example, do you have that colleague or family member who is excessively thorough? Someone who makes you feel worse off as the options increase?

This is exasperating to my soul. Like when we all go out for lunch at the office. You hope it’s going to be a relaxed, enjoyable thirty minutes away from the stress of the workplace, but in reality, it’s just an infuriating exercise in indecision.

My old coworker was the king of lunchtime anxiety. Whenever he would finally make a meal choice, that was only the beginning of his neurotic quest. He insisted on imagining what all the other menu possibilities were, becoming curious about what would have happened if he had chosen differently, even trying to get information about how all the other people’s meals turned out, only giving him plate envy and regret the decision he made.

For the love of god, it’s just a fucking sandwich, try to enjoy yourself.

Why do people make life hard when it doesn’t have to be? Why do we immediately attribute intellectual virtue to thoroughness?

If we want to have a real shot at happiness, choice minimalism is going to get us there.

Zuckerberg, love the guy or hate the guy, does do one thing right, which is wear the exact same outfit every single day. He famously said that he wanted to clear his life to make it so that he had to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve his community.

Proving my theory, that the best decision is the one we don’t have to make.

Because that way, there is no pre choice, current choice or post choice pondering. There is no corner around which there might be something better.

We simply look no further and allow the countless other available choices to become irrelevant, so we can all just focus on enjoying the moment for one in our lives.

Happiness is more than a matter of choice, but choice is a matter of happiness.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Are you allowing yourself and others to get snared into an endless tangle of option anxiety?