12 Excessive Choices

Recently I was going to build some shelves (there is a golf point to this, stick with me). What are my choices? I pulled up my Menards App and investigated ¾” x 15 ¾” x whatever length I could find. Ideally I only needed about 6 ft of shelve, but according to my app, 8 footer’s is where the options lie. Oh God, choices???

According to Menards there were 12 different colors I could choose from, then I could choose bull nosed or unfinished. I started thinking about the room, what other colors were in there, what would show dirt, what would scratch, what would the brackets look best with. I just kept looking and thinking… I couldn’t decide, I closed the app completely paralyzed. Then I thought, geez…I only need 6 footers, I wonder how that selection is. I opened the app again. There were two choices, white and wheat, and I hate the color wheat. Decision was made, off to the store I went.

Paradox of Choices

Psychologist Barry Schwartz has written about the “paradox of choice”. Western industrialized society has a ton of it, but no one can figure out how to deal with it. Have you looked at the salad dressing aisle? Have you ever wanted to rent a VRBO condo? Have you thought about what shaft would hit the ball farther? Dr. Schwartz would say:

1. Too many choices simply prevents us from choosing, because we know there is plenty of room to make the wrong choice.
2. Actually choosing, whether correct or incorrect leads to regret, I mean… maybe I could have made a better choice.

There are too many choices of golf shafts. If there were only two: A) feels like a noodle or B) feels like a board, people would be buying clubs non-stop with no regrets. Let’s face it, I’m not the greatest of help either. With so many options, I’ve taken the doctor’s approach. “well, that treatment has its pluses and minuses and that other treatment has it’s pluses and minuses”. Well doc, what would you do? “Again, there are pluses and minuses”. Comforting isn’t it? Amazing how real doctors and swing doctors can project those decisions right back onto the people totally incapable of making a decision.

Options are good to a point…and one of the things RSPGL tries to do is keep it simple. As an owner, people claim they want choices, but choices are annoying. This article needs to end, but as an example… ask yourself how many different sizes of range ball bags do I sell? That’s right one. You can’t screw that up, can you?