Choosing with elegance

Knowing how to choose is increasingly valuable

🏷️ Categories: Decision making and biases, Minimalism

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Choosing. How complicated. Or not. It depends.

Yesterday I went grocery shopping. I looked at the shopping list. —”2 packs of tea”. Now that winter is coming I like to drink something hot on cold mornings. I reached the shelf and looked up. —"Red tea, black tea, green tea, ginger tea, fennel, thyme, linden, pennyroyal, chamomile, chamomile with honey, turmeric, rooibos, mango and red fruit.”

—“Really?”, I said as I re-read the list that said, “2 packets of tea”.

I stood contemplative for several minutes, having to turn my head from side to side to look at the entire infusion section. —“I can't believe there are so many.” —”I'll take a green tea, at least I know I like that one.”

I pushed the shopping cart as I browsed the aisle shelves. There were more types of pizza than I could read about, more types of yogurt than I could read about, more types of cereal than I could read about; there were endless choices for everything.

I wondered if we really needed so many choices to be satisfied.

Choose, choose and choose

Philosopher Renata Salecl calls it “the tyranny of choice.” Sounds dramatic, doesn't it?

We live in the age of choice and flexibility. Never before have we had so many options available to choose our path and never before has it been so easy to change options without suffering consequences. It sounds great, but it's not so great.

We are drowning in a sea of options.

Sometimes I miss the simplicity of having 2 or 3 options and that's it.

It's funny, we always think of freedom as something positive, but the more options you are given to choose from, the greater the dissatisfaction we usually feel towards the choice we make (Schwartz, 2009). How paradoxical and how difficult. To be able to navigate the sea of options without getting shipwrecked in the attempt (me, in front of infusions).

It sounds ridiculous, but it is increasingly valuable to be clear about what we want.

Not what we are told we want, not what we think we should want. What we want. When was the last time you made a decision without hearing that “what if” in your head?

It's hard to remember.

Iyengar and Lepper did a very curious study in 2000. There were two stalls to go buy jam, in one there were 6 types of jams, in the other stall there were 24, 4 times more choices. More choices did not make us happier, people used to buy jam at the stall with 6 types. What a surprise.

So many choices paralyzes us, overwhelms us, makes us hesitate.

This constant doubt wears down our confidence (Iyengar et al., 2006). If you are freer than ever and regret the path you took, you begin to doubt your identity: what you are and what you want to become.

24 varieties of jam? Thanks, but no. Six are enough for me.

Think elegantly

I couldn't get it out of my head. Curiosity moved me to investigate further.

I spent afternoons reading about choosing. In the end, I discovered an interesting concept. Think elegantly. Elegance comes from eligĕre in Latin, which means “to choose” that is, elegance and choose are related words. The elegant person is the one who knows how to choose (Ruíz, 2018). Think about that.

The word “smart” also implies elegance and intelligence.

• Knowing how to choose the people you surround yourself with.

• Knowing how to choose your material possessions.

• Knowing how to choose the words with which you address the other person.

• Knowing how to choose what to pay attention to.

Elegance is to have criteria. Knowing what you want.

Imagine you are going to buy a car:

• What are your needs? (large family? daily or sporadic use?).

• What is important to you in a car? (Efficient consumption? Safety? Advanced technology?).

If you are discerning, there are not millions of choices, just a few that fit what you are looking for. There will be 3 or 4 models that stand out in that aspect.

Without your own criteria it is very tempting to choose what others choose, like the weather vane that follows the wind no matter where it goes. In Spain they say, “Where is Vicente going? Where the people go.”

He is not freer who has more options, but he who chooses best among those he has.

It is not a question of quantity of options, but of quality of choice.

Be smart.

✍️ It's your turn: Why do you choose to read me and not someone else? I want to get to know more of the people who eagerly open my letters every day.

💭 Quote of the day: “Identity is a set of choices we have to make every day. It's about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves show.” Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility.

Thank you for choosing me one more day ♥️.

References 📚

1. Iyengar, S. S., & Lepper, M. R. (2000). When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing? Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 79(6), 995-1006. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.6.995

2. Iyengar, S. S., Wells, R. E., & Schwartz, B. (2006). Doing Better but Feeling Worse. Psychological Science, 17(2), 143-150. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01677.x

3. Ruíz, J. C. (2018). El arte de pensar: Cómo los grandes filósofos pueden estimular nuestro pensamiento crítico. Almuzara.

4. Salecl, R. (2011). The tirany of choice.

5. Schwartz, B. (2009). The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, Revised Edition. Harper Collins.