Too many choices or overchoosing is an emotional symptom where people have such a hard time making a choice that they end up making zero decisions. The word was first introduced by Alvin Toffler back in his 1970 book, Future Shock. He explained it as the paralysis of the decision-maker. People in today's society have so many choices - too many, in fact, that they are paralyzed with indecision.
Many people explain this overchopping dilemma as a result of living under a heavy amount of stress. Other people believe it to be due to the increasing complexity of modern life. Still others point out that most of us have been conditioned by the society into making extremely complex decisions under conditions where the outcomes are not uncertain. All these can contribute to the increasing decision overload. In fact, an increasing number of people believe that they have too many choices and are unable to make a choice.
Decision overload is particularly visible in today's marketplace, where there are in excess of a million different choices. When you think about that, it is easy to understand why people get stuck with indecision. If you are faced with a myriad of choices, how do you know what to choose? How do you know whether a particular option is the best one to select? This is where the paralyzing feeling of indecision comes from.
In many ways, the problem of choice overload is compounded by the increasing number of decisions people tend to take each day. If you are like most people today, you probably do not even have time to contemplate all the choices you must make. That is the crux of the problem of overshooting or decision fatigue. You tend to get wrapped up in the task at hand and ignore all the unnecessary details that do not have anything to do with your choice.
The end result of the overshooting phenomenon is usually the same. You are less satisfied with your life. You are not accomplishing the goals you set for yourself. You feel stressed, impatient, overwhelmed and ultimately, even angry. All these emotions are counterproductive to your overall goal of becoming a more successful individual.
As mentioned earlier, choice paralysis is basically the inability to make decisions or feel comfortable with the decisions you are making. As you can imagine, this can be a severely limiting experience, if it happens to you consistently. It also leads you to question the validity of your own decisions and the very foundation of your self-esteem. Indeed, when this happens, the person often feels like they cannot trust their own judgment. In short, they begin to question their ability to make good decisions in the first place.
Is making choices too much to handle? If you tell yourself that you have too many choices or options when in reality, you only have a few options, then that is probably the case. You must be honest with yourself and realize how this feeling is affecting your decision making process. It may be helpful to ask a close friend, family member or even a co-worker about how they manage to make decisions in their lives. Many people who struggled with too many choices as adults have learned to manage it successfully by hiring a personal development professional.
Overcoming decision making paralysis is very important. In fact, one of the biggest keys to success is to learn how to reduce the number of choices you have to make. For example, if you only have three choices to make, rather than going through an entire list of 100, you will be more likely to make the right ones. As you get more comfortable with making decisions and getting feedback, you will be able to eliminate more options until you eventually have zero choices left. In the end, you will be more satisfied with your life and will have made fewer mistakes along the way.
