The Paradox Of Choice: Why More Is Less [Hardcover]

I learned from reading this book that we should all strive to be satisficers rather maximizers. A satisficer is a person who chooses a product or service that is good enough. A maximizer is a person who is always trying to get the best product. A satisficer is usually happy with their choice. In contrast, a maximizer isn't happy and often regrets what they bought.

We should also try to stick our choices and not change our minds. This is another way to reduce anixety I learned in the book. This is very hard to do consistently, but I thought this was a good piece of advice. I also enjoyed the idea of being a chooser and not a picker. Choosers have time to change their goals whereas pickers do not. Choosers take their time making a decision considering all their options unlike pickers who do not.

The Paradox of Choice is an excellent book with a lot of interesting information about the habits people have in making decisions. It also has very useful tips on how to reduce anixety in your life.

The Paradox of Choice is a great introductory read if you have never heard of things like Opportunity Costs, Anchoring, Escalation of Commitment, etc. It does a great job of outlining various psychology realities around why choice actually creates more anxiety and depression. If you want to learn about these topics in simple, plain English, this is your book.

If you know about these topics already, have taken Psych 101 somewhere, and want to understand best practices of companies and individuals managing choice, this is going to be a disappointment. Of 11 chapters, only 1 was dedicated to how to effectively manage the barrage of choices one is faced with everyday in this society. And that chapter was pretty skimpy on specifics.

What I found lacking in this book were specific examples of how individuals effectively handle choice in a positive, proactive way. For example, what is the decision process of a satisficer (a term used in the book) for going to college or buying a car?

Furthermore, I would have liked to have seen this author talk about ways we as consumers and businesspeople can influence companies to begin to edit down the number of brands, products, and therefore choices we have to make on a regular basis.

Granted, holding this book to such a high standard might just be my desire to see this topic delved into further given the importance of it to our satisfaction with our everyday lives, but I still was expecting more. At least from a hardcover.

No one is immune, he says. Even if someone doesn't care about clothes or restaurants, he might care very much about TV channels or books. And these are just the relatively unimportant kinds of choices. Which cookie or pair of jeans we choose doesn't really matter very much. Which health care plan or which university we choose matters quite a lot. How do different people deal with making decisions?

Schwartz analyzes from every angle how people make choices. He divides people into two groups, Maximizers and Satisficers, to describe how some people try to make the best possible choice out of an increasing number of options, and others just settle for the first choice that meets their standards. (I think he should have held out for a better choice of word than "satisficer.")

I was a bit disappointed that Schwartz dismissed the voluntary simplicity movement so quickly. They have covered this ground and found practical ways of dealing with an overabundance of choice. Instead of exploring their findings, Schwartz picked up a copy of Real Simple magazine, and found it was all about advertising. If he had picked up a copy of The Overspent American by Juliet Schor or Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin instead, he might have found some genuine discussion of simple living rather than Madison Avenue's exploitation of it.

I enjoyed the first part of The Paradox of Choice, about how we choose, but the second half, about regret and depression, seemed to drag. Fortunately, I was able to choose to skim the slow bits and move right to the more interesting conclusion, about how to become more satisfied (or "satisficed") through better decision-making.