How to make decisions when you have too many options
Imagine what you would do with complete freedom. It may sound like a dream come true with never-ending possibilities.
The quest for greater freedom unites us as humans, and is often what motivates us to embark on major life transitions. We hope it will be the answer to life’s challenges.
However, newfound freedom can be overwhelming. We gain an abundance of possible options for our next steps. How do we choose?
We might end up paralysed by the pressure, procrastinating making a decision; surrendering control and choosing a direction randomly; or even restricting ourselves, returning to the familiar but less desirable situation we left behind. The known limitations of confinement can feel safer than the uncertain possibilities of freedom.
An extreme depiction is when people are released from prison and deliberately return. A more common example is when we choose to believe narratives that limit our perception of the world, and therefore restrict our available options: a type of mental captivity.
Unbounded freedom comes with its own set of struggles.
The Paradox of Choice Overload
When people are given too many choices and told to pick one, we feel overloaded: like my aging laptop, our brains’ cognitive processors can only handle so much. That’s especially true for those of us, like me, who are maximisers (people who want to see all the possibilities and compare them before deciding on the ‘best’) versus those who are satisficers (people who are content with an option that’s ‘good enough’). It turns out not everyone is a fan of decision trees (and if you don’t know what that is, you’re in for some exciting reading e.g. here).
To overcome choice overload during major life transitions, here are four steps you can take:
- Ask a different question
We can agonise unnecessarily trying to solve the wrong problem. A simple reframe of the question we’re asking ourselves about our decision might change our outlook on our options.
For example, instead of asking: What am I going to do with the rest of my life? or How do I make the most of my newfound freedom? — try: What’s an activity that gives me joy? What’s most likely to be fulfilling for me? What’s most pressing? What would my child self have encouraged me to do?
The irony of choice overload is that the majority of the options available to us are unknown: we don’t know they exist. Nobody knows they exist. They’re intangible, beyond our awareness and our control. Still, we often hold onto the illusion that we know more and can control more than we actually can.
2. Try before you buy
In moments of uncertainty, there are things we know (or think we know); and things we don’t know (or think we don’t know). In order to have better insight into our available options, it’s helpful to convert the unknowns into knowns. The best way to do this is through a series of small tests or experiments: like window shopping for our preferences. When we reframe our intention as ‘browsing’, it relieves us from the pressure of committing to one option, and therefore we are less likely to feel the effect of cognitive overload.
For example, when making a career transition, we may not know what it is that we want to do next, or what we like or dislike doing. Rather than expect to have all the answers at once, we can explore our new likes and dislikes in a playful, curious way. Internships, volunteer work, or online courses are all effective “try before you buy” approaches for a professional transition.
When you find something you enjoy, do more of it if possible. When you find something that you don’t enjoy, do less of it (to the extent that you can). Say no to activities or engagements that aren’t best for you, or aren’t best right now. Remember — there is a ‘later’!
3. Let go of the desire to have a coherent story
When feeling overwhelmed by an over-abundance of choice, it can help to practice detachment from the unrealistic perception of control over the future. Embrace the unknown. More practically, try to let go of the desire for a logical explanation for how your choices fit into a grand plan for your life trajectory.
While uncertainty can be terrifying, positive surprises emerge from the unknown. For example, I’m now an urban kizomba DJ — this was not part of any goal-setting list! I’m tempted to invent a coherent narrative for how this fits into my ‘life purpose’; but it’s so much easier to simply enjoy the adventure that I’m on, without needing to explain it.
To detach from control, it may be helpful to ask: What narratives are you applying to your life? These might be action-oriented (the purpose of my life is to make an impact, or be fulfilled, or have money); psychological (in life, I am successful, or unlucky, or a victim); etc.
Ask yourself if there is a good reason for putting meaning on these particular narratives. How powerful are these in your life? Are they serving you? For a different perspective, listen to the song Spem in Alium by the composer Thomas Tallis: there is no driving narrative melody. What thoughts or feelings arise as you hear it?
4. Feel the way forwards
Choice overload can get us caught up in our thoughts, distanced from our emotions. We might not know what we truly want to do. It can be helpful to try embodied activities that bring us back in connection with our bodies, such as yoga, dance, or martial arts. Meditation, free-writing and daydreaming are all helpful techniques for us to access our intuition and observe our emotions and thought patterns more distinctly.
Embracing the Freedom to Choose
We yearn for freedom throughout our lives. But the more options we have available to us, the more overwhelming it can become to make definitive choices.
It’s normal not to have the answers right away — and actually this uncertainty is an important and essential part of being open to life’s adventures. As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote,
“Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Be grateful to have the luxury of choice. Explore the possibilities available to you with curiosity and openness.
Navigating freedom is an art and a science: I hope these tips will help you discover new paths, uncover hidden passions, and find greater fulfillment and ease.
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