Happiness by Design

Author:Paul Dolan [Dolan, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-08-11T04:00:00+00:00

Let others decide

Another more radical option is sometimes to let people you trust actually make decisions for you. Allow your desires, projections, and beliefs to be reflected in their choices. This will free up your attentional energy for use elsewhere. Psychologists have alerted us to the possibility that the psychological cost of a choice depends on how many options are available. You will often feel worse when you have more choices—this is known as the paradox of choice.26 How long do you spend at the store selecting from twenty-five different shampoos? Letting someone else choose for you, or at least letting them help you choose, may be particularly effective if there is uncertainty about the outcome of a choice, because you’ll have very little idea about what would have happened if you’d selected the other option; or if the stakes aren’t particularly high, because the outcome won’t have as big an impact on you as agonizing over the decision will.

As a small example of limiting choice to benefit myself in the end, I often let someone else choose my meal for me when I go out for dinner. Anyone who knows me knows that it’s all about protein, so as long as the meal is loaded with it, I’m happy. Not only do I not have to agonize over the menu, but it’s quite exciting not knowing what someone will order for me. And I also get to engage in general chitchat rather than being distracted by the menu. Now, this works for me, but it would be tricky for us all to do this and some people might not like the added pressure of choosing someone else’s dinner as well as their own. But I reckon a happiness-improving strategy could emerge as we each choose different degrees of control and delegation over different decisions. You might want to consider a decision you could delegate, and who you would delegate it to.

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