I’m back at it, with another book review, which is still on track with a book a week, though I started lagging behind recently. This book comes recommended by my friend, Neeraj.

The book I read, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz is all about the paradox that the freedom of having more choices seems to make us less happy. I really enjoyed this book and its insights. He basically divides people into two main categories when it comes to making choices: Maximizers and Satisficers. Maximizers want to find the best option no matter what it takes, Satisficers are willing to settle for less then the best. Though, you might think it’s better to be a Maximizer, the reality is that with so many choices available you can never really be sure you’ve found the ‘best’ option and thus maximizer’s lead a life of constant choice seeking, regret at not making the right choice, comparing choices and more. Being a Satisficers allows people to not be captivated by choices but simply chose and continue about their lives focused on the more important things.

An example of this in my own life is when it comes to groceries. I shop at three different places: Cub, Aldi, and Hampden Park Coop. For ethical reasons there are certain things I buy only at the coop, for financial reasons there are things I generally buy only at Aldi, but then there is a wide range of things in between. I constantly agonize over where to purchase certain items, whether the price difference justifies going organic, and the possible ramifications of the options. And this is quite constant. So, as it relates to certain food items, I tend to be a maximizer, which when you think about it, is sort of ridiculous. The time I’ve spent thinking through the items and options, the mental anguish that’s taken toll at being unhappy with the choice I made and so forth is certainly not worth the small, almost insignificant price differences between many of the products. Now, you might have different areas that you ‘maximize’ in and sometimes that’s okay, but often it leaves us much less happy then we’d otherwise be.

If you just google the book title you’ll find some good summaries and thoughts on the book, so I won’t do too much summarizing here, but for my benefit and yours here are the areas I thought where interesting:

• We Spend Too Much Time Choosing– though we’ve always acknowledge that community and relationships are what makes us happy, in our consumer culture we are spending more and more time shopping, but at stores and online, looking for the best deals.
• Opportunity Cost Makes Us Regret– I’ve mentioned opportunity cost before, but it’s negative effect is that when we make a choice, even if we are happy with it, we will inevitably regret the missed opportunities of what we could have done with that same money. (i.e. a vacation at the beach, while regretting not being in the mountains)
• Social Comparison in a Global Society Leaves Us Longing– We constantly compare ourselves socially to others, and in small circles that’s usually okay as we’ll likely interact with people at similar socio-economic levels, but with internet, TV and advertising we are left constantly longing to be like that person whose richer than us.

There are a lot more tidbits and the studies he references are so interesting. I could write more but I’ll just leave you with some links and videos below. Next week I’ll try and write more about what I’m going to try and do with this new found knowledge.

20 minute summary at TED Conference (watch either this one or the next one, probably not both)

One Hour summary at Google

Interesting thoughts and summaries on the book:

Wikipedia
The Simple Dollar