I've Decided ... Oh, Wait ...

We like choices ... don't we?  I mean, isn't it great that every time I go to my favorite restaurant for breakfast I get so many choices:

• Coffee (mild or bold, with cream or without) or Tea (4 varieties with or without sugar, lemon, or cream.)
• Eggs - over-easy, over-hard, poached, or scrambled (with ketchup or hot sauce.)
• Toast or Pancake - White, wheat, whole grain or Challah (with jelly or without)
• Potatoes - hash browns or seasoned cubes.
• Bacon or Sausage (links or patties, chicken or vegetarian.)
• Orange juice, grapefruit juice, tomato juice, or water.

My quick math says there are well over a 1000 combinations available to me for my simple breakfast.

Choices can be fun and they help me get the tasty foods I desire.  But there are some interesting things I've learned about having too many choices.


Chip Heath, a professor of organizational behavior at the graduate school of business at Stanford university and co-author of Made to Stick. cited a study about choice and the sales of jelly in a grocery store. A table was set out offering 25 flavors of jelly for a week. Many people stopped by to visit the table and few sales were made. The next week, same store, same table, 6 flavors were on display. Fewer people stopped by, but sales of jelly were 10 times greater.

Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice: Why Too Many Options Lead to Dissatisfaction (check out his TED talk - 19 minutes) tells us that many choice options lead to consumer paralysis, mental confusion, and regret about possibly having made the wrong choice. The result? No choice at all or extremely heightened dissatisfaction with our choice.

In life and business, we often create unnecessary complexity for the sake of being able to offer or enjoy many choices. Ironically, these choices can promote customer (or our own) dissatisfaction. Perhaps the best choice we can make is to simplify.