MAY 2004 IN
RICK ASTER’S WORLD
Having choices is, of course, a good thing. The idea of freedom includes the ability to make decisions about your own actions and circumstances. But having too many choices can be a problem.
This idea is nothing new; futurist Alvin Toffler wrote about the problems of overchoice a third of a century ago. Since then, of course, choice has only expanded, and this is especially apparent in the commercial arena. U.S. supermarkets have doubled in size. Retailers of all kinds are using more floor space than ever to show you all the different items they hope you will buy. Try to imagine 38 million square feet of retail space — more than a square mile of products to choose from — and that’s just for the city of Tucson!
As a child, I was taught a strategy for shopping and for many other things in life. The strategy can be summarized in three steps:
For especially serious situations, this strategy may work well. For example, if I found myself deciding how to treat a dangerous medical condition, this is probably the strategy I would follow to make my decision. But it is hardly a viable strategy for a person faced with a square mile of products. In a typical retail store, as in many situations in life, there are so many choices that it is impossible to consider them systematically. Even so, people may still try, and it is a stressful process that tends to leave people feeling unhappy.
Advertisers and sales scripts deliberately manipulate people by taking advantage of their tendency to evaluate choices systematically. One of the main objectives of advertising is to present a new alternative — that is, to get you to consider a choice that you otherwise wouldn’t have worried about.
If having more choices means having more to worry about, then the additional choices can make you unhappy. “The Tyranny of Choice,” an article that appeared in last month’s Scientific American, suggests that this is what is happening to people today. Increasing affluence and the wider range of choice it presents is being accompanied by a decrease in people’s feeling of well-being. The “explosion of choice,” far from giving people an expanded sense of freedom, leaves them feeling like they don’t know what to do.
A partial solution to the problem of overchoice is to throw caution to the wind when making minor decisions. For example, if you are deciding whether to mend a sweater or throw it away, chances are, you can afford to make a snap decision or follow a whim. What makes this difficult to do is that many decisions seem more momentous than they are. People mull over their options in part because they fear the consequences of making a wrong decision — even in situations where there are no consequences worth worrying about. A big part of this is a basic fear of missing out, of having a good opportunity and letting it get away. It’s all too easy to imagine that you’re not getting something that other people are getting because you made a bad decision and missed your chance.
In days like these, there is no logic foundation for this fear. Every minute, there are thousands of things and happenings in the world around you that would interest you if you were present, but which you are not experiencing because you don’t know about them. You can be sure that you are “missing out” on most of the things that happen in your community, in your field of work, perhaps even in your family. You have no choice. Your attention is limited, and you have to focus on something specific in order to be able to do anything at all.
If you doubt this, consider the example of the Web. There are billions of web pages. In the time it takes you to read this web page, thousands more are added. You can’t get much value from the Web if you try to keep track of everything on it, but you can find value just by finding something that’s of interest to you at the moment.
Often, the most constructive way to approach the Web is to decide in advance exactly what you want to find, and then see if a search engine or directory will find it for you. This is the opposite of systematically evaluating your alternatives, but it may provide the best result in the shortest time.
And if this is true of the Web, it is even more true of the broader world that lies beyond the Web. In an unlimited universe, it is never possible to evaluate eery option you have.
Recently, I have been trying to put this idea into practice by taking less time to order food in restaurants. When I stop to think about it, there is little to gain by studying a restaurant menu. It might offer me a hundred choices, but really, almost any of them would be fine. Often, too, everything on the menu is around the same price. Instead of taking five minutes to read and fully understand the menu and weigh my options in the hope of making the perfect decision, I am better off making a quick decision about food and spending those five minutes in conversation with the people who came to the restaurant with me.
But looking at a menu and picking something to eat in five or ten seconds is easier said than done. Most restaurant menus are designed not only to hold your attention for as long as possible, but to make you as hungry as they can, so you might order more than you would rationally want to eat. To make a quick decision, you have to resist the pull of the menu.
It is the same with commercial messages in all their various forms. They try to get you to mull over a decision, a specific decision they present to you in terms that are the most favorable to the product they are trying to sell. If possible, they try to get you to consider their product as a yes or no question, something like, “Do I need a Doohickey or not?” If they can get you to mull over this question, it is far more likely to lead you to obtain a Doohickey than if you are considering more general questions such as, “What do I need?” or, “What do I want and how can I accomplish it?”
These questions are more powerful because they take a broader view that includes more possibilities. Advertisers are constantly trying to narrow the scope of your thoughts, to remove as much as they can from your mental vision — without, of course, taking their product away. But it’s to your advantage to broaden the scope of your thoughts as much as you can. Instead of mulling over a choice, you will usually feel better mulling over your objectives. The idea of a choice can imply that there might be only one way to accomplish something correctly. But focus on the objective itself, and you’re only looking for any of the many possible actions or strategies that can lead to the result.
One of the most powerful strategies people use to avoid overchoice is by grouping a large number of choice into an abstract choice about identity or lifestyle. For example, if I decide I will be athlete, it is like making a hundred choices all at once. I will wear certain kinds of clothes, do certain kinds of activities, and think about certain kinds of things. This simplifies things. I don’t have to make up everything about being an athlete. There is a pattern I can follow.
Unfortunately, advertising interferes with this strategy. One of the main objectives of advertising is to differentiate the product it promotes, to show that the product is not like all the other products out there. As it does so, it tries to make its product an exception to any general decisions you have already made about your life. For example, suppose you have decided you are a cool person. For you, that idea about yourself might imply that you will drive a cool car, certainly not a Cadillac. But Cadillac advertising will try to get you to make an exception, so that you might say, “I’m cool in other ways, but I can still drive a Cadillac.” Most of the time, you should ignore advertiser’s attempts to get you to break your own rules. Every exception you make is a complication that adds stress to your life.
If you have made choices about your identity or the style of your life, there is value in those choices. You should defend your choices and go to some trouble to maintain your identity because this saves you from countless choices you would otherwise have to make separately.
Many people think of choices as an inevitable part of life, something the world forces on all of us. In this point of view, you make choices even when you try not to; in the words of an old Rush song, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” You will feel better about the choices you make if you abandon this way of looking at choices and make only the choices you want to make.
In reality, the world can’t force a person to make a choice any more than it can force a rock to make a choice. Picture a high school guidance counselor standing in front of a large rock and saying, “Now, you have to decide whether you’re going to college or not.” Nothing forces the rock to respond in that situation, and nothing forces you to respond either.
Commercial messages often ask you, in so many words, whether you will continue with your miserable life or try their product. I receive unwanted e-mail messages that imply this kind of question all day long. It would be insane for me to consider every such question as if it represented a choice I had to make. Instead, I simply see those questions as random events that do not have any connection to me and the things I want to do.
If it’s possible to look at unsolicited commercial e-mail that way, then it is possible to respond to other demands for a decision in the same way.
There is one choice in particular I’m sure you’ve been told you have to make. “You have to decide how you will spend your money,” people have told you. This too is incorrect, and it is a particularly dangerous belief to hold.
Dangerous, because it tells you that when you have money, you must spend it. Those who entertain this belief are the kind of people who are referred to in the old saying, “A fool and his money are soon parted.” If you think of money only as something to spend, you are looking at only half of the value of money. The other half of the value of money, of course, has to do with holding it, or saving. When you have money, you are in a financially strong position, which means being prepared to use money to protect yourself when trouble arises. This side of money is so important that, on most days, you might choose not to spend any money at all. As the cliche puts it, you may “keep your wallet in your pocket.”
Most of the time, nothing forces you to spend your money. And when advertisers ask you to choose whether to buy their product or not, nothing forces you to make that choice or even to entertain the possibility. You may simply see the advertiser’s message as being directed toward someone else — someone, perhaps, who still has the misfortune of believing that the world can force them to make a choice.
Next month: The Fraud of French Fries
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