One of the books I got for Christmas is The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. It’s an interesting book, which helped illuminate for me some of the struggles I’ve had, mostly since returning from Scotland, when I left school and entered the “real world”. One of the problems I had when I got back is that I was afraid of grocery shopping. I knew that at the grocery store I would find not only a lot more different kinds of things than I had in the small Tesco in Scotland, but also totally different things. I’d have to start over from scratch figuring out what I wanted to buy and it would be a pain. Little did I know I was having my first problems with the paradox of choice.
As great as it may be that when I went to Target to buy a mop, I was able to choose from half an aisle’s worth of mops and got a nice wet/dry one with a washable microfiber pile, I did wonder — do we really need so many different kinds of mops in this world? Why did I spend several hours browsing the web to figure out which small form-factor digital camera I wanted, and come away feeling like I needed to be an expert critical reader to successfully navigate the world of Amazon reviews? And why on earth has it been so hard for me to find my place in the world? I don’t know that I have found it now, but having been settled in the same apartment and job for more than 18 months now, and involved in several activities, I feel a lot less lost than I did when I first came back. It’s nice to learn from the book that given the multiplicity of options it’s not surprising that I felt overwhelmed.
But it’s also important to find out how not to be, because choice isn’t going away. Each of us cares about some things, so the choices multiply. Some people care a lot about mops. I don’t, so it’s probably more important that I grab a mop that looks okay to me and not worry about it. Some people don’t care a lot about cameras so maybe they should just buy the one that their friend bought that they like the look of, but it probably is worth it for me to invest some time into that decision — albeit perhaps not as much as I eventually did, although I am quite happy with my new Fuji Finepix F50fd. It’s nice that the book provides practical and well-described ways of dealing with the onslaught.