The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz is a very well done book. This book tells the story of how having more options often leads to worse decision making, lower satisfaction, lower level of happiness.
Instead of searching for the best, Schwartz recommends satisficing.
Satisficing is the term for when you decide what you are going to do to satisfy minimum requirement to achieve a particular goal.
Many, many, many books fizzle in the middle, and this book is no exception.
It’s a bit of a chore to slug through in the middle chapters where the core concepts of the book are quite clear, but more stories and research are added to get you to the average 250-300 page length for nonfiction books.
One thing that hit me hard on a personal level was what Schwartz had to say about how "eternally seeking" for the best restaurant, hotel, car, luggage, insurance company, vacation spot, etc., can lead me to a worse off position. Often, good enough is just fine.
All this reminds me of a wonderful webcomic on xkcd – the webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
Another thing I liked was being reminded of Dan Kahneman's research on ending on a 'high' note - it's early in the book, but I love Dan's TED talk on this topic. Awesome stuff.
Tons of research on decision making reveals that we remember the last thing we did or decided in a experience or decision chain the best – so, it's best to finish dinners, hotel visits, vacations with a bang then a bust.
This reminds me of Aaron Sorkin’s theory in his MasterClass that the last 15 minutes of a movie are crucial – it has to finish well. Sorkin argues that movies can be great for 2 hours, but if they don’t finish well, audiences are left feeling cheated.
While there is a lot to enjoy in this book, I do think that some of this book is problematic. Particularly, it’s where we get a hint of Schwartz arguing that perhaps we’d all be more satisfied if the government would help us reduce choice. The question the reader is left with is – how would the government make that decision? Is that a moral thing for the government to get involved in increasing happiness and satisfaction by forcing us to reduce our choices?
Satisficing also leaves us with the question of whether settling for good enough is, well, good enough.
There are some individuals, who seem to have cared a great deal about details that might seem to be trivial – their drive to find, use, or do the best seems to be over the top. This loops back to the issue of finding a minimal criteria to help make things work.
Satisficing is the best way to avoid the problem of diminishing return on investment. At some point, when enough information has been gathered, a decision needs to be made. Doing so should leave one feeling disappointed, but rather with the knowledge that, given the context of knowledge gathered up to a certain point, the best decision was made.
The driving force behind this book is the idea that setting goals that achieve less than 100% of what you can do will lead to better decision making, higher satisfaction and increased level of happiness.
This reminds me of a recent podcast on Human Flourishing Project, where Alex Epstein discusses how achieving 80% of your potential helps create productive momentum and increases happiness. The 80% of your potential rule is a satisficing one.
Cover image via amazon.com.
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