How to Simplify Life By Reducing Your Choices

Think back 20 years (or 40 or more if you can!), and I'm sure you'll agree that life is more crowded and difficult now than it used to be.

And it's not just adults who feel it.  Our kids and grandkids are part of the most-stressed generation ever.  There are plenty of reasons – social media, super-busy schedules, lack of down time and play time, and the pressure to excel are some of them.

Another is the pressing need to decide what you want to be when you grow up.  Now, oldsters have always asked this question of the young, but today it seems you have to decide much sooner.  Many of my husband's 6th grade students (aged 11-12) were in a constant tizzy about grades and test scores because they wanted to be sure to qualify for AP courses in high school – the lack of which could hamper their ability to get into a "good" college.  (I won't even talk about the serious stress attendant on the cost of such a college today.)

Increasing choices

I think people of past generations had more straightforward lives than we do now.  For one thing, regardless of their class, they had comparatively few options in life.  There were fewer products, brands, and ads to badger them and fewer "must see" attractions.  Their lives were slower, smaller, and quieter.  So whenever they made a choice, they could just get on with it, pick their course of action, and see it through with relatively little to distract them.

For example, imagine my teen-aged grandfather, Kenneth.  His father has died, his oldest brother has been killed in a war, and his next oldest brother inherits the family farm.  My grandfather needs to choose a vocation.  He hasn't been an impressive student, so he's not going to pursue higher education.  His family knows a blacksmith, so that's a potential apprenticeship, but automobiles seem poised to replace the horse and wagon.  Alternatively, he can work for his brother, move to the city and look for a factory job, or take his chances on the exciting Venezuelan oil boom he's read about in the newspapers.

He can't wait until he's 27 to decide.  He's not going to take odd jobs while he tries to write a novel.  He's definitely not going to backpack around Europe "following his bliss."  These aren't necessarily bad things, but the ability to pursue them would only keep him from settling down and making the best of the options he has.

Four options, but all clearly different from each other.  Some will be immediately more appealing than others, depending on the young man's temperament and personality.  He'll decide, and then focus his efforts on making the most of it.  (My grandfather chose Venezuela.)

His sister also had a few clear choices before her when she came of age.  Aunt Edith had excelled in school, but an educated woman in 1920 was probably going to be a teacher or a nurse.  Or she could take business courses and become a secretary or a bookkeeper – but she might have to move to the city to find work.  Or she might marry and raise children.  (Edith chose teaching, eventually married and had two kids, then later earned a master's degree and returned to teaching.)

But the average American today has dozens, maybe even hundreds of opportunities as good as my grandfather's four or my great aunt's five.  You could become an optician, a massage therapist, or an insurance broker with less time and effort than my grandfather would have needed to become a master blacksmith.  You could become a line cook, an emergency medical technician, a podcaster, a real estate agent, or a veterinary assistant with more ease.  Gender doesn't limit your options, and a civil engineer or certified public accountant has no more education than a trauma nurse or credentialed teacher.

You can learn how to prepare yourself for any of these jobs for free with a few Google searches.  You could contact people in these fields and get your questions answered.  Information and resources are so abundant that even if you don't have much money, or if you're already in your 30s or 40s, you could still achieve them if you're determined.

Bemused by abundance

A human life is still only made of 24-hour days, and whatever your desires, you can still only manage so much activity and diversion if you're going to succeed at anything.  Focus is that important.  It's the only way to give your talents a chance to develop.

And it's not only in our choice of career where we experience this flood of possibilities.  We're faced with tons of decision points every day:  what to eat, what to wear, where to live, how to entertain ourselves, which personal goals to pursue, what to believe, what to pay attention to.

In fact, our alternatives keep increasing.  And the more alternatives there are to what you're doing, the more resolve you need to keep doing it.  Whether you're deciding what color to paint your wall, what to eat for dinner, who to date, or which movie or TV show to stream, there are dozens and dozens of ways you could go, and that roadmap keeps getting more crowded and complex.

Having so many options is exciting.  It's a blessing.  But it can also be crippling.  With so many possibilities to pursue, it becomes harder to choose, and harder to make the most of any choice.  With endless potential before us, we may:

• doubt the rightness of our choice
• fear that we're missing out on something better
• be more inclined to give up and switch to something else when obstacles arise, never completing anything
• become paralyzed by overthinking
• become reckless and impulsive, with no plan at all
• default to the path of least resistance (i.e. live in mom's basement and play video games)

So Kenneth and Edith might have had an advantage.  They had fewer opportunities, but they were much less liable to squander the opportunities they had or to be depleted by the act of choosing.  It was not only easier to make a choice from fewer options, but easier to commit and make the best of the path they followed.  It might have even been easier to find contentment.

Close your door

We're probably going to live our whole lives within this flood of possibilities.  Sure, you can place limits on how much media you consume, but it's almost impossible in our all-pervasive culture to be completely unaware of politicians, celebrities, world events, fashions, disasters, stuff for sale, the latest in entertainment, possible hobbies, unending chores, etc.  You can't simply retreat into a cave.

Or can you?

When we're overloaded and overwhelmed by choice, our energy is drained.  We have less patience, less flexibility, and we struggle to get anything done.  But we can reduce the stress and fatigue by reducing our choices.

Reach into that swirling mass of possibilities and select just one.  Then figuratively close your door on interruptions (especially electronic ones) as you concentrate on that one thing.  Pretend you're in that cave, and there's just this one task, this one option.  Stay there for 15-30 minutes, then take a short break if you need to.  "Close the door" again until that task is done.  Now you can choose something else.

Here's how this might look in a variety of situations as you reduce debate and hesitation:

• Assign certain activities to certain days of the week.
• Plan a capsule wardrobe for work.
• Stick with a weekly menu.  (Rotate seasonally for more variety.)
• Automate bill payments.
• Make lists.
• Choose default options such as a particular grocery store, gas station, or a handful of restaurants you "always" patronize.  (Branch out one weekend a month, or on vacation.)
• When shopping or researching, only allow yourself three options to avoid "analysis paralysis."
• Routinize recurring tasks, such as checking email or returning phone calls at certain times each day.
• Cut activities that no longer serve or excite you.
• Reduce the clutter in your home so you have less to manage and fewer distractions.
• Don't make big decisions when you're tired or upset.  Research shows that mornings are best for strategic thinking.
• Take regular short breaks, and get enough sleep each night.

It will be almost like having my ancestors' clarity of purpose!

Related article:  For Daily Ease, Make One-Time Choices