Step 1: Handling Choice Overload
from Dial It Down, Live It Up
by Jeff Davidson
A typical U.S. supermarket carries at least 38,000 items, twice as many as decades ago. There are so many different products and brands that your choices can seem overwhelming. At work, how do you handle the endless options of vendors, systems, software, products, and service solutions?
While manufacturers seek to differentiate their products and survive in a crowded marketplace, if we focus intently on what we want or need, the net result is more time, effort, and energy.
Too many choices, as author Alvin Toffler told us more than forty years ago in his landmark book Future Shock, inhibit our ability to choose. We now face what he called "future shock," meaning our ability to effectively decide shuts down.
Whether it's athletic shoes, cell phone options, bagels, bottled water, or tennis rackets, too many choices, like too much information, do not serve us.
Simplicity, rather than complexity, should be your product preference among items that are otherwise equal in terms of cost, durability, expected life cycle, and warranty. If one item has dozens of features while another has only a handful (namely the ones you need), choose the latter and don't fret about a possible upgrade later.
Learn how to dial down the number of choices to make a wise selection. You've sprung yourself from a complexity trap and handled choice overload.
Creating checklists can also help you avoid choice overload, providing an easy tool for evaluating a potential vendor, product, or service offering. Review everything from a product's design, quality, and features to its cost considerations and whether quantity discounts are available. Ask yourself whether the product will fit within the location you plan to keep it, if there's a guarantee, or if you would need to buy any other items to make it work.
When you have to make a choice, often all you need is a good set of questions to guide you, save you time, maintain peace of mind, and come up smiling!
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