Paradox of Choices

Less is more and more is less

Why?

I often undergo this once in a year when I try to change my phone. For past few years, I have been using smartphones (Android) but buying them is a strenuous exercise. It heavily taxes me. In fact, i take approximately about a month to decide whether to buy a phone and another month thinking what phone/brand to buy. Given the rate at which that I change the phone for past few years, it makes sense to shortlist two or three phones and pick the right one. It is especially more tedious when you want to buy things online (because the website throws options at you that you can compare)

Aren't choices good? The answer is "yes" and "no". The choices are good as long as we are able to decide and they are bad when we hit the decision paralysis (making choices).

Certainly, the choices beyond certain point overwhelm us. Our brain thinks that it is analyzing the choices but fails to understand that the choices deceive us. The brain gets tired and as a result, we end up making not so good choices (bad) or do not take decisions at all (worse).

If you are from India and had taken your wife to get a saree, you would have experienced this. The female is known to make wise decisions when it comes to life but often indecisive to select a saree (so the number of choices is the culprit)

So, it is true if someone says "less is more" (when the choice is less, you act on those choices very quickly).

Tidbits - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice

Positive Illusion Bias - Why we are not what we think of?

Answer the following questions. Answers sound familiar?

1. Have you seen anyone boasting about themselves? (yep, they are all around us)
2. Have you ever boasted about yourself to someone and later felt that you actually overrated yourself? (sometimes, not mostly i am grounded)

If you answer "yes" to one of the questions, read further.

We overrate ourselves, often. On the positive things we rate ourselves above average and on the negative things we rate ourselves below average. Yes, we perceive ourselves to be better than most others around us.

If you are a manager, you had to do handle it quite often and more certainly once the yearly performance rating are over. People rate themselves above most of the people in the team on work/impact they created and how much less overhead these caused. While that may not be intentional, we need to understand what are the implications of doing that - Positive Illusion Bias. It does not stop at performance reviews and extends in all facets of life. It is how we are wired.

Positive Illusion has both positive and negative side effects. In a shorter terms, it seems to help relieve stress and be more self-confident. But over longer term, it has negative side effects when we overdo it (it could be sudden fall). Thinking that i will stand out from the pack often leads to less preparation which leads to wreckage as it gives false sense (Ex: My health is better than my friends, i can cram the exam since i m better grasping, i am more honest than most in the society, trying to predict the stock market thinking that i am an ace trader etc).

To Sum Up: Whether or not it is good - it is not the reality. It is one more reason to remain grounded and modest.

Top of the mind Thinking

Whatever clever we are, we just do most of the things from top of the mind. We do something when others watch us and we tend to do totally different thing when there are no one around us[another variation is when you are near a person know to you versus when a stranger is watching you].

You can have any value system (it evolves or degrades over time, i m not commenting anything on the value system) but make sure that it is available at the top of your mind. In a very passionate/emotional situation, we tend to do things from top of the mind. If you happen to do something against your value system, just don't feel sorry. But make sure that you make an initiative to bring the value system to the top of your mind.

More than thinking, "top of the mind thinking" is more relevant in day-to-day decision making.

Once you do that, you will never feel sorry in life (buying certain things that you dont need, deciding on your next job, taking an extra scoop of ice cream in Baskin Robbins, dieting and life style changes that we are trying to alter everyday etc).

Idea of Cheap and Free

Linux is free but it is solid operating system, so it is not cheap.

Wikipedia is free but it is not cheap (the amount of information and quality is simply amazing).

Advise in StackOverflow is free but we never say/feel it is cheap.

Free is something valuable you give with "no strings attached" to convey that you value the relationship and association. If all the free you give is not valuable (or literally of no use), then the free becomes cheap. It, then, spoils the relationship/association.

Certainly, free and cheap are two different/extreme/opposite experiences.

Perception Profiling

Now, it gets very interesting when you witness the crux of you undergoing a change. The change by itself is not so satisfying. The moment that you get converted is so enriching. When you move from the camp of understanding to actually doing is something very important.

I have told you before (couple of weeks back) about Dan Ariely's book "Predictably Irrational" (here and here) . Since the book discusses about decision making and human behaviors, i was thinking that i would get some insights on how people are in general and what forces us to make certain decisions than others. I never thought that it could affect me so deeply and give a breakthrough.

For past few days, i tend to profile my thoughts and profile the way i perceive others' action and my interactions with them. Note here, that i m not profiling or judging others but my own perceptions on others and my interactions with others. Though not consistently, i change my perceptions but the good news is that i m at least willing to change my perceptions after analysis/thinking.

In some cases, knowingly i was able to recover from my usual half-baked thinking/reactions and soon i think should be understanding those hidden forces. I stop building up perceptions (my own perceptions) and i think the next step would be not to mix the perceptions when making decisions (a difficult job, though it is worth trying).

I m glad that i m able to profile my perceptions on others and i think it will help me to build my relationships with others - may it be friends, relatives or friends @ work.

By the way, don't ask me what is perception profiling. I don't know yet what it is. I tried to draw parallels from software (you know, i m a software guy ;-)). We profile applications when it is slow/consumes more memory. I joined perceptions and profiling together to make it perception profiling. Disclaimer: I haven't searched for a possible prior art :-))

[if you think Dan has hired me to sell his book, you perception is wrong and if you are not thinking like that, my perception is wrong :-). I was awestruck with his experiments and trying to understand why we are totally irrational and what can we do about it when we come to know that we are irrational. Here is the book]

About Image:
I first saw the image (young lady/old lady image) in the book "An introduction to general system thinking" by Gerald Weinberg.

Predictably Irrational Again - Video

Again, it is predictably irrational. But this time it is video. Watch the following video of Dan Ariely speaking about predictably irrational.

I think, from the whole of this talk, i tend to like the portion he talks about cheating.

Even though we have thousands of mirrors in us (and conscience), we still cheat (for example, how we cheat insurance companies. I think, the insurance companies know this and again they cheat us the following years). We don't bother whether it home, street or work, we are going to fudge to an extent that will make us still have a great self image.

If you have the book, the above video could be a companion and makes the reading/understanding a lot easier. While watching this video, i could recollect whatever i read and i m going to read the book again for the insights.

This is one of the books that i thoroughly enjoyed.

 

Predictably Irrational - New Perspective

How many of us make decisions everyday and how many decisions we make everyday?

Do we apply common sense before making the decisions and how often we regret for the decisions we make. How many times in our life we fool ourselves that our decisions are in fact correct. How often we justify the decisions we make and why do we want to appear intelligent to ourselves (leave alone trying to be intelligent in front of others). Is there a reason why we want to be a super man in a group and boast about our contributions or things we own.

 The book Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely talks about the forces that shapes our decisions. The book talks about various factors that shapes one's thinking fully substantiated with a lot of research work conducted on real people. The experiments that are discussed and the conclusion drawn opens up a lot of learning on how we make certain decisions at certain conditions and how quickly we change to a different decision (a true 180 degree) when the conditions are changed only a bit.

I really like the way in which the experiments are presented and the presentation of experiments by itself is a great learning. If you read the book, i feel one will get at least couple of value adds (how to conduct experiments for research, how to present them and how to draw conclusion from the experiments) apart from knowing a bit on decision making.

If you find the book in your library, I would recommend you to give it a glance.

While many of us thinking of starting the new year with new resolution and trying to be better, i feel so happy about reading this book and the way i m bidding farewell to 2011. I think, this book is a good investment i made in 2011.

Wish you a happy new year

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