5 ms·

> It doesn’t have to be about big decisions. Next time you notice yourself grabbing the exact same snack between two meetings, ask yourself: is there another op

by doix 4y ago

> It doesn’t have to be about big decisions. Next time you notice yourself grabbing the exact same snack between two meetings, ask yourself: is there another option? Personally, I think this is the worst advice. Don't spend time thinking about unimportant things. I think it's a major contributor to the default effect. There are so many choices to make everyday that thinking about each one becomes exhausting/overwhelming so people just pick the default all the time (even when it matters). The key is figuring out what matters and what doesn't (to you) and only thinking about what does. Also setting yourself up for "good" defaults is a way to work towards an outcome without having to constantly make good choices. E.g if you never buy unhealthy snacks, you'll never have unhealthy snacks at home, so picking any random snack (the default) works towards living a healthier life.

brookst 4y ago
> Don't spend time thinking about unimportant things. I think it's a major contributor to the default effect. Maybe? I get the Steve Jobs “only own one outfit so no energy is wasted deciding what to wear” thing, but it’s a fine line between that and the “wear a dark suit because everyone else does” thing. > The key is figuring out what matters and what doesn’t (to you) and only thinking about what does. Lots of respect for recognizing that not everyone will have the same answers. But, what if “what matters” is learning new things, or challenging oneself, or being a generalist? There are a lot of areas that (some) people find fulfilling that don’t lend themselves to single-minded focus. For those things and people, maybe this is good advice.
- taneq 4y ago
  Is there really, though? One is making your own decision then re-using that cached result, the other is following the herd. (Unless, of course, following the herd is your carefully considered shortcut to shedding cognitive load… which might have some merit!)
- atoav 4y ago
  Realistically the way most of us will choose is that we go with our defaults most of the time and occasionally invest some time and energy to rethink our defaults actively. The majority will not stand in front of their wardrobe every day and confront the choice of outfit on a fundamental level each time no matter if they are a boring person or a avantgarde noise musician. Most people decide once and stay with their decisions, and revisit them every now and then when they feel it is not appropriate anymore. Doing it that way allows us to invest more time than we would have every day into some decision and harvest the fruit of that investigation for a while. The alternative would be to spend more time each day and more importantly: live with the uncertainty if you will find something suitable each day. Whether the outfit is a lazy black suit or the most high fashion doesn't really change the way you decide. One can think long and hard and still come up with a boring and tasteless choice after. Others might not think a lot at all and effortlessly choose interesting things. This has to do with aesthetics and is usually about time/energy that has been invested elsewhere. The point is: choices cost energy. Choices we take every day take energy every day. Not fundamentally questioning your whole existence up to that point every day is resonable.
  - soco 4y ago
    And as a person who only wears black I can tell you, there are so many nuances of "black" you will need to match... but anyway not everybody cares about their wardrobe in the same detail. I know enough people who would just throw on the next tshirt in the pile, those clean jeans and whatever sneakers are not muddy from the last rain and call it a day. Everybody makes choices from time to time just not all about the same topics.
  - Archelaos 4y ago
    In the case of outfits there seems to be a deeper psychological mechanism involved. I usually wear black jeans, but also have brown and blue ones. Black is more easily combinable with diffrent colors of shirts. So it is an easy choice in the morning: black jeans + any of my shirts. When I wear the brown shirt, I have to choose a bit more carfully, but it is not really a big deal. However, what I observe is that I fell always a bit uncomfotable after I made my decision to wear brown. It feels a little bit like I am in disguise. A have similar observation when going to some of my favourite restaurants. Even when I take my time to look through the menu, I very often choose the same dish or from only two or three standard alternatives, although I was actively deliberating to choose something else this time. It really seems that it is not only the effort of reaching a decision that is behind the default effect, but some unconscious risk-aversion process that does not allow the mind to rest easily in the non-default case.
- tuyiown 4y ago
  No way a lifetime is enough to explore the most meaningful possible thing in your life without picking it first. You have to choose without topic to introduce the decision making process, and importance seems a very very good way to prioritize, BUT only if you look at it as the «important for _me_» ones.
bigDinosaur 4y ago
It's worth thinking about options for e.g. snacks but yes, better to schedule a few hours in a year/month/whatever to basically plan and explore rather than just some ad-hoc 'should I be doing this?' at every instance.
peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> The key is figuring out what matters and what doesn't (to you) and only thinking about what does truth is nothing matters and everything matters. Say you are a teenage girl, you see yourself in the mirror, you don't like your body, you think you're fat. You see other "fat" girls on reddit that receive a lot of praise for displaying themselves half naked. your looks are very important to you, you think about it constantly and it depresses you. one day you post a picture on this reddit thing, your face is hidden, it's hard to recognize the place where it was take, but you wanna try'n see what happens. it works, men (and some women) like your picture, they put a like on it, they compliment your looks, you now feel better about yourself. so you post more and more of them, everyone more audacious than the one before. now what's important to you is: how can I be more visible, more visibility = more self esteem! you open on OF and now what's important is "how can I promote it?". not long after what's important becomes: how can I make money out of it? and now you're in trouble, because that's your job and you didn't even know you wanted it and are not sure if it's the right thing to do, but you do it anyway, once you set things in motion, inertia becomes a b*tch. --- It's an hyperbole, I know, but it's the small things that start the engine. If people only thought about what actually matters it would be: food, water, shelter. If I never thought "is there another option?" when I was much younger about clubs to go to in my hometown, I would never have discovered the underground music scene lurking in the shadows that has then become a big part of my life and it's now so important to me. And I was one who did not even cared so much about music and went straight to "the default choice" about it. > E.g if you never buy unhealthy snacks, you'll never have unhealthy snacks at home, 1 - there's no such thing as healthy snacks (if we are talking about snacks the product and not "a small amount of food eaten between meals") 2 - it means that at one point you though "is there another option?" about snacks, because the default option is not healthy at all, especially in the US, proving that "It doesn’t have to be about big decisions"
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  Is this the porn version of "marijuana is a gateway drug and you'll end up a crackhead on the street if you take a single puff"? Do you understand why that's unconvincing to most people?
NikolaNovak 4y ago
Right. I actually have the analysis paralysis problem in my life - too much time and stress spent on decisions / choices that are largely equivalent.
bfgoodrich 4y ago
slothtrop 4y ago
On the daily, yes. However, periodically it makes sense to evaluate and check in on any and all habits. If there's a problem, you create new ones. You can't have the cognitive overhead of decision-making for everything all the time, which is why we have to change course for our auto-pilot as needed. Even for those things that matter more, you're not really going to be constantly making decisions about them.
m3047 4y ago
If I have two bad choices, I'll cast about for a third. ;-) But for choices between everything from "equally meh" to "equally awesome" I often flip a coin. I do this because it removes my agency in the choice. My conscious story about this is that this comes from attempting to undermine sunk cost and survivor bias; but it could also be an artifact arising from the fact that I don't tend to habituate as much as norms, and therefore I think about "default" decisions more than most people. Anyway what I get out of this is "life is good" instead of "good choice you made"; "I'd never noticed this difference between these things (or the outcome) before"; or "I really don't like Y as much as X". It also nudges me to contemplate the "both" or "neither" options for a fleeting moment. People comment on it, for instance strangers in restaurants; people at the grocery store; ordinary people who seem baffled that someone can live their life by flipping a coin.
- quesera 4y ago
  To avoid the spectacle of a coin flip (also, I don't carry coins!), I do the geeky thing: - Take the first printed word I see - Sum the letters' ordinal positions ("ramen" == 18+1+13+5+14 == 51) - Calculate modulus X for one of X choices (51 mod 3 == 0) - Select option index Y, ordered visually, geographically, temporally, or alphabetically as appropriate, sometimes in reverse to be ornery (["alice", "bob", "eve"][0] == "alice") And Alice is the winner. ... If I'm with another person who also can't decide, I skip the first two steps by asking them for a random number between 1 and (a random two digit number). Then I just tell them whatever my secret preference was all along, and we watch the good movie together happily. Kidding about that last part. All movies suck.

by doix 4y ago

brookst 4y ago

> Don't spend time thinking about unimportant things. I think it's a major contributor to the default effect. Maybe? I get the Steve Jobs “only own one outfit so no energy is wasted deciding what to wear” thing, but it’s a fine line between that and the “wear a dark suit because everyone else does” thing. > The key is figuring out what matters and what doesn’t (to you) and only thinking about what does. Lots of respect for recognizing that not everyone will have the same answers. But, what if “what matters” is learning new things, or challenging oneself, or being a generalist? There are a lot of areas that (some) people find fulfilling that don’t lend themselves to single-minded focus. For those things and people, maybe this is good advice.

taneq 4y ago
Is there really, though? One is making your own decision then re-using that cached result, the other is following the herd. (Unless, of course, following the herd is your carefully considered shortcut to shedding cognitive load… which might have some merit!)
atoav 4y ago
Realistically the way most of us will choose is that we go with our defaults most of the time and occasionally invest some time and energy to rethink our defaults actively. The majority will not stand in front of their wardrobe every day and confront the choice of outfit on a fundamental level each time no matter if they are a boring person or a avantgarde noise musician. Most people decide once and stay with their decisions, and revisit them every now and then when they feel it is not appropriate anymore. Doing it that way allows us to invest more time than we would have every day into some decision and harvest the fruit of that investigation for a while. The alternative would be to spend more time each day and more importantly: live with the uncertainty if you will find something suitable each day. Whether the outfit is a lazy black suit or the most high fashion doesn't really change the way you decide. One can think long and hard and still come up with a boring and tasteless choice after. Others might not think a lot at all and effortlessly choose interesting things. This has to do with aesthetics and is usually about time/energy that has been invested elsewhere. The point is: choices cost energy. Choices we take every day take energy every day. Not fundamentally questioning your whole existence up to that point every day is resonable.
- soco 4y ago
  And as a person who only wears black I can tell you, there are so many nuances of "black" you will need to match... but anyway not everybody cares about their wardrobe in the same detail. I know enough people who would just throw on the next tshirt in the pile, those clean jeans and whatever sneakers are not muddy from the last rain and call it a day. Everybody makes choices from time to time just not all about the same topics.
- Archelaos 4y ago
  In the case of outfits there seems to be a deeper psychological mechanism involved. I usually wear black jeans, but also have brown and blue ones. Black is more easily combinable with diffrent colors of shirts. So it is an easy choice in the morning: black jeans + any of my shirts. When I wear the brown shirt, I have to choose a bit more carfully, but it is not really a big deal. However, what I observe is that I fell always a bit uncomfotable after I made my decision to wear brown. It feels a little bit like I am in disguise. A have similar observation when going to some of my favourite restaurants. Even when I take my time to look through the menu, I very often choose the same dish or from only two or three standard alternatives, although I was actively deliberating to choose something else this time. It really seems that it is not only the effort of reaching a decision that is behind the default effect, but some unconscious risk-aversion process that does not allow the mind to rest easily in the non-default case.
tuyiown 4y ago
No way a lifetime is enough to explore the most meaningful possible thing in your life without picking it first. You have to choose without topic to introduce the decision making process, and importance seems a very very good way to prioritize, BUT only if you look at it as the «important for _me_» ones.

bigDinosaur 4y ago

It's worth thinking about options for e.g. snacks but yes, better to schedule a few hours in a year/month/whatever to basically plan and explore rather than just some ad-hoc 'should I be doing this?' at every instance.

peoplefromibiza 4y ago

> The key is figuring out what matters and what doesn't (to you) and only thinking about what does truth is nothing matters and everything matters. Say you are a teenage girl, you see yourself in the mirror, you don't like your body, you think you're fat. You see other "fat" girls on reddit that receive a lot of praise for displaying themselves half naked. your looks are very important to you, you think about it constantly and it depresses you. one day you post a picture on this reddit thing, your face is hidden, it's hard to recognize the place where it was take, but you wanna try'n see what happens. it works, men (and some women) like your picture, they put a like on it, they compliment your looks, you now feel better about yourself. so you post more and more of them, everyone more audacious than the one before. now what's important to you is: how can I be more visible, more visibility = more self esteem! you open on OF and now what's important is "how can I promote it?". not long after what's important becomes: how can I make money out of it? and now you're in trouble, because that's your job and you didn't even know you wanted it and are not sure if it's the right thing to do, but you do it anyway, once you set things in motion, inertia becomes a b*tch. --- It's an hyperbole, I know, but it's the small things that start the engine. If people only thought about what actually matters it would be: food, water, shelter. If I never thought "is there another option?" when I was much younger about clubs to go to in my hometown, I would never have discovered the underground music scene lurking in the shadows that has then become a big part of my life and it's now so important to me. And I was one who did not even cared so much about music and went straight to "the default choice" about it. > E.g if you never buy unhealthy snacks, you'll never have unhealthy snacks at home, 1 - there's no such thing as healthy snacks (if we are talking about snacks the product and not "a small amount of food eaten between meals") 2 - it means that at one point you though "is there another option?" about snacks, because the default option is not healthy at all, especially in the US, proving that "It doesn’t have to be about big decisions"

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
Is this the porn version of "marijuana is a gateway drug and you'll end up a crackhead on the street if you take a single puff"? Do you understand why that's unconvincing to most people?

NikolaNovak 4y ago

Right. I actually have the analysis paralysis problem in my life - too much time and stress spent on decisions / choices that are largely equivalent.

bfgoodrich 4y ago

slothtrop 4y ago

On the daily, yes. However, periodically it makes sense to evaluate and check in on any and all habits. If there's a problem, you create new ones. You can't have the cognitive overhead of decision-making for everything all the time, which is why we have to change course for our auto-pilot as needed. Even for those things that matter more, you're not really going to be constantly making decisions about them.

m3047 4y ago

If I have two bad choices, I'll cast about for a third. ;-) But for choices between everything from "equally meh" to "equally awesome" I often flip a coin. I do this because it removes my agency in the choice. My conscious story about this is that this comes from attempting to undermine sunk cost and survivor bias; but it could also be an artifact arising from the fact that I don't tend to habituate as much as norms, and therefore I think about "default" decisions more than most people. Anyway what I get out of this is "life is good" instead of "good choice you made"; "I'd never noticed this difference between these things (or the outcome) before"; or "I really don't like Y as much as X". It also nudges me to contemplate the "both" or "neither" options for a fleeting moment. People comment on it, for instance strangers in restaurants; people at the grocery store; ordinary people who seem baffled that someone can live their life by flipping a coin.

quesera 4y ago
To avoid the spectacle of a coin flip (also, I don't carry coins!), I do the geeky thing: - Take the first printed word I see - Sum the letters' ordinal positions ("ramen" == 18+1+13+5+14 == 51) - Calculate modulus X for one of X choices (51 mod 3 == 0) - Select option index Y, ordered visually, geographically, temporally, or alphabetically as appropriate, sometimes in reverse to be ornery (["alice", "bob", "eve"][0] == "alice") And Alice is the winner. ... If I'm with another person who also can't decide, I skip the first two steps by asking them for a random number between 1 and (a random two digit number). Then I just tell them whatever my secret preference was all along, and we watch the good movie together happily. Kidding about that last part. All movies suck.