The Paradox of Choice

I just finished reading Barry Schwartz's "The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less".

There are a lot of things in here which overlap quite a bit with certain ideas about materialism and simple living which I've already had in place for a while. Either from socialistic aspects of my upbringing, Buddhism, or general study of philosophy.

From my interpretation - much of the problem with too much choice comes down to the "hedonic treadmill", and how even though this is something nearly everyone can understand in theory, it's very hard to fully grasp and put into practice - learning to stop these mind habits from stressing us out.

It's very easy to think "If only I could have such and such, then everything would be awesome". But then when we get the thing and get used to it, there is always another "such and such" to strive for. Rinse, lather, repeat. Meanwhile we're just stressed and depressed and not enjoying the simple moments of our everyday life.

"Satisficing" and Balance

Of course, there's nothing wrong with having goals and ambitions, but when you're in a mindset where they cause almost nothing but constant stress - maybe with the occasional high for a short while when we "get" something - maybe it's time to step back.

Many of the arguments in the book essentially come down to cultivating a mindset of "Satisficing": just choose what's good enough for a given purpose, and then forget about it - don't question it again. Don't stress about other paths you could have taken if only you did just that little bit more legwork - it almost inevitably leads to more stress than it's worth. Not because any one given decision you made was necessarily objectively good or bad, but because the sum total of all the decisions we make all the time is just so overwhelming these days, that the process of "maximising" all of those decisions adds up to a life of stress, subjectively. Potentially even spiralling down into a feeling of total loss of control, if not clinical depression.

One of the key suggestions the author makes is that we should think of important decisions as irreversible. eg. When you buy a car, don't stress about other makes and models that might be slightly better, and that you might have bought instead if only you did a bit more research. Just enjoy the car you have for what it's worth. 

I would take this a step further: think of ALL decisions as irreversible.

Irreversible Decisions

Not literally.What I mean by this is a bit more subtle, and captured by Impermanence. Every moment of every day is unique, never to be repeated again. So in a sense, by definition every decision we make is irreversible. And even the tiniest decisions can have knock-on effects which change our lives, if only we are mindful enough to see it at the time.

But of course, this doesn't mean that we have to keep doing things which are obviously going in a very bad direction (eg. Just two weeks ago I started and then quit a job 3 days later - because it turned out very unsuitable). It's more about not nit-picking and second guessing all the time when things are in fact good enough (there's that "satisficing" mindset again). As well as learning from "bad" decisions in a way which is mentally channelled into feeling like a positive life lesson rather than a negative nagging feeling of regret. 

In short: with the right attitude, I think all our decisions and experiences can actually be made to feel like reasonably positive life lessons, rather than an endless treadmill of hedonic failures and dissatisfaction.

Anyway, these are the main things I got out of it. A highly recommended read.