In the spirit of Alvin Toffler's Future Shock, a social critique of our obsession with choice, and how it contributes to anxiety, dissatisfaction and regret. This paperback includes a new P.S. section with author interviews, insights, features, suggested readings, and more.

Whether we're buying a pair of jeans, ordering a cup of coffee, selecting a long-distance carrier, applying to college, choosing a doctor, or setting up a 401(k), everyday decisions--both big and small--have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming abundance of choice with which we are presented.

We assume that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware of excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis, anxiety, and perpetual stress. And, in a culture that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical depression.

In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains at what point choice--the hallmark of individual freedom and self-determination that we so cherish--becomes detrimental to our psychological and emotional well-being. In accessible, engaging, and anecdotal prose, Schwartz shows how the dramatic explosion in choice--from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs--has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution. Schwartz also shows how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse.

By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counterintuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on the important ones and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make.

I have seen Barry Schwartz interviewed on TV and listened to a radio interview regarding this book. These interviews focused a lot on decision-making in things like shopping, and how having more choices actually makes shopping harder and makes everyone dislike the process more.

I think "Paradox of Choice" does bring insight into shopping, but its range is actually much wider than that. Schwartz discusses people making difficult decisions about jobs, families, where to live, whether to have children, how to spend recreational time, choosing colleges, etc. He talks about why making these decisions today is much harder than it was 30 years ago, and he offers many practical suggestions for how to address decision-making so that it creates less stress and more happiness. He even discusses how so much additional choice affects children, and how parents can help make childhood (particularly young childhood) less stressful.

There are two other factors about this book that really made it great for me. The first is that Schwartz is a serious academic (although his writing isn't dense in any way at all) -- so he talks about studies that back up his assertions in every facet of his argument. He describes the studies in a very lively way, so that they really come to life, and we can understand how they relate to the issue at hand. And, importantly, we then realize that his discussion is really founded on the latest and most advanced research into decision-making. This is not some self-help guru with a half-baked idea spouting off.

The other thing that I really like about this book is that it has given me a new way to think about our larger society, and what I like and don't like about it. Schwartz has written books before that are expressly critiques of some aspects of America today, and while this book is more focused on the individual, you can't help but come away feeling more thoughtful about the larger effect of these issues on our culture.

I only wish that I had read this book before my latest career change -- it would have saved me a considerable amount of anguish. This is a great book!!


My review of The Paradox of Choice   January 11, 2004
Robert G Yokoyama (Mililani, Hawaii)
135 out of 155 found this review helpful

I enjoyed reading this book very much. Having rules and constraints in society is a good thing and should be embraced. This is an important idea of this book. The Paradox of Choice explains how people arrive at the decisions they do. This book also talks about the negative aspects of making decisions in a world with so many choices. Finally, this book offers suggestions on how to make better choices and reduce stress.

Barry Schwartz makes many good points about decision making. One of them is that because of the growing number of choices we are presented with, we don't always have the time to look at all the information out there to make the best choice. Another interesting point is that people expect certain decisions to be made for them. In the health care field for example, we expect the doctor to tell what kind of treatment we need.

I learned from reading this book that we should all strive to be satisficers rather maximizers. A satisficer is a person who chooses a product or service that is good enough. A maximizer is a person who is always trying to get the best product. A satisficer is usually happy with their choice. In contrast, a maximizer isn't happy and often regrets what they bought.

We should also try to stick our choices and not change our minds. This is another way to reduce anixety I learned in the book. This is very hard to do consistently, but I thought this was a good piece of advice. I also enjoyed the idea of being a chooser and not a picker. Choosers have time to change their goals whereas pickers do not. Choosers take their time making a decision considering all their options unlike pickers who do not.

The Paradox of Choice is an excellent book with a lot of interesting information about the habits people have in making decisions. It also has very useful tips on how to reduce anixety in your life.


Good and bad choices in financial trading   September 26, 2006
Dr Alexander Elder (New York, USA)
27 out of 29 found this review helpful

Having a choice in life is a good thing; a person without choices is often miserable. As the number of choices grows, our happiness grows with them, but then it begins to decline. Having too many choices creates stress. Schwartz describes his visit to a local supermarket: "...next to the crackers were 285 varieties of cookies. Among chocolate chip cookies there were 21 options. ... Across the isle were juices - 13 `sports drinks,' 65 `box drinks' for kids, 85 other flavors and brands of juices, and 75 iced teas and adult drinks. I could get these tea drinks sweetened (sugar or artificial sweetener), lemoned, and flavored. ... I found 61 varieties of suntan oil and sunblock, and 80 different pain relievers - aspirin, acetaminophen, ibuprofen; 350 milligrams or 500 milligrams; caplets, capsules, and tablets; coated or uncoated. There were 40 options for toothpaste, 150 lipsticks, 75 eyeliners, and 90 colors of nail polish from one brand alone."

Those wide choices may seem appealing, but Schwartz brings our attention to what he calls `the darker side of freedom' - the stress of choice. This paradox is the most pronounced in the financial markets. Even though his book is about the paradox of choice in general, I read it with an eye towards the financial markets, my own trading, and what I see in other traders.

Shall we trade stocks, futures, or options? If stocks, shall we trade the more seasoned issues on the NYSE or look for riskier high-growth candidates on the NASDAQ? Should we track agricultural, tropical, or financial futures? And what about the forex? Should we buy or write options, or look into more complex strategies, such as spreads? And worst of all - what if another market makes a spectacular move while our attention is focused elsewhere? No wonder the majority of traders feel so stressed. Schwartz says "Choosing almost always involves giving up something else of value. ... The overload of choice contributes to dissatisfaction."

"Losses hurt more than gains satisfy. ... The cost of any option involves passing up the opportunities that a different option would have afforded. ... Conflict induces people to avoid decisions. ...Emotional unpleasantness makes for bad decisions. ... The desire to avoid regret leads to inaction inertia. ... An overload of choice contributes to dissatisfaction."

Every trader who kicked himself after a profitable trade for having `left more money on the table' will chuckle at a cartoon of a kid in a t-shirt that says "Brown ... but my first choice was Yale." Schwartz shows how people are divided into `maximizers' who always strive for the best and `satisficers' those who settle for some reasonable level of success. "Almost everyone who scores high on maximization scale also scores high on regret." You can decide to be a maximizer in a very small number of situations that truly matter to you and be a more mellow satisficer in the rest of your life. "We would be better off seeking what was good enough instead of seeking the best."

Connections with trading kept running through my mind while reading this book. How many successful people kick themselves, feeling that their performance was not good enough. How many stay way too long in a bad trade because of `sunk costs.' Schwartz exposes the endless flow of coulda-shoulda-woulda as `counterfactual thinking.' He shows how keeping records of decisions impacts people's attitudes towards those decisions. I have been saying over and again that keeping good records is the single most important step towards becoming a successful trader.

The tone of Professor Schwartz's book is that of a friendly, intelligent neighbor, dealing with the same human dilemmas as you and I. He shares his thinking about our problems by talking with us, not at us. His compact and smoothly written book sheds light on many aspects of decision-making, the stress of `roads not taken,' the curse of high expectations, etc.

The mere fact of outlining a problem is a big step towards clarity, but after 10 chapters, I felt ready to hear about his proposed solutions. They were delivered in Chapter 11 (which I hope had nothing to do with the eponymous chapter of the bankruptcy code :-)). Professor Schwartz's advice was lucid, logical, and sensible - but you will have to read it yourself (I do not describe it here because reciting solutions without having worked through the problems is likely not to be useful.)

I highly recommend this book to all traders. My only quibble is the paper quality of the paperback - it is grayish, and should have been much whiter! But the publisher offers you no choice!

www elder com


If choices are making you crazy read this book   March 3, 2004
Kyle Lassiter (Colorado, United States)
22 out of 24 found this review helpful

Dr. Schwartz has exposed the difference between the best and good enough. He tells us that "maximizers" are people who want the absolute best, so they have to examine every choice or they fear they are not getting the best. However, looking at all the choices is usually frustrating and takes too much time. A "satisficer" is a person who looks at the options and chooses an option that is good enough.
Maximizers may look at satisficers and say, "they're lazy or they're compromisers", but Dr. Schwartz points out that satisficers can have high standards. Dr. Schwart points out that the satisficer with high standards is internally motivated. The maximizer is more externally motivated because they are not looking at themselves, they're looking at others to see if what they have is better. Dr. Schwartz points out that social comparison brings unhappiness.


Choice is good if you choose well.   January 27, 2005
Thomas Mongle (Houston)
25 out of 28 found this review helpful

From the title of Barry Schwartz's "The Paradox of Choice," we know the argument will be that choice perhaps might not always be a good thing. He likens the current situation in America to the small town resident who visits Manhattan for the first time and is overwhelmed by all the activity (choices). Although most of his research involves everything but investing, I was struck by how much his concepts fit perfectly into what would be a good way to approach a successful investing program.
If we put less emphasis on his discussion of whether or not we are better off with more choices (obviously we are), and more on his advice on how to deal with this product of freedom, we get a book that is logically laid out and argues its point well. He first describes the environment in which our choices come at us, then investigates how our inability of deal with them leads to numerous problems - personal, professional, psychological. The most important part of the book is his summation of how we can adapt and learn to live with this new phenomenon.
His solutions, which he says require practice, discipline, and perhaps a new way of thinking, very closely follow the ingredients of good investing:
(1) Choose when to choose - focus on what's important. Be jealous of how you spend your time. Prioritize. Some things just aren't worth the time and effort.
(2) Be a chooser, not a picker - A chooser actively creates directions; pickers take whatever is available. Choosers choose when; pickers select whatever's available. Choosers are people who think actively about the possibilities before making a decision. Choosers reflect on what's important and the consequences of the action. They makes decisions in a way that reflects awareness of what a given choice means about themselves as people. Choosers are thoughtful enough to conclude that perhaps none of the available alternatives are satisfactory. The pickers grab this or that and hope for the best.
(3) Satisfice more and maximize less - (His definition of the two types of people in the world - satisficers and maximizers). "It is maximizers who have expectations which can't be met. It is maximizers who worry most about regret, about missed opportunities...and it is mazimizers who are most disappointed when decisions are not as good as they expected." - (225). The satisficers settle for something that is good enough and don't worry about the possibility that there might be something better. They have criteria and standards. They search until they find an item that fits those standards, then stop. Maximizers are constantly nagged that they haven't chosen the best. Therefore they get less satisfaction out of their choices than do satisficers.
(4) The opportunity costs of opportunity costs - Don't belabor the alternative - beware of getting bogged down in comparisons. If it works, go with it.
(5) Make your decisions nonreversible - Being able to reverse the decision makes you always wanting to do just that. A "the grass is always greener" mentality that leads to failure and unhappiness.
(6) Practice an "Attitude of Gratitude" - Appreciate what is, not what might have been.
(7) Regret less - Realize that one decision isn't going to make or break you. Live with it and move on.
(8) Anticipate adaptation - Don't become dissatisfied with something that was satisfying.
(9) Control expectations - Don't expect too much.
(10) Curtail social comparisons - Don't compare yourself to others.
(11) Learn to love constraints - Set up your own rules and live by them. They help protect you from yourself.
All in all, an excellent course on dealing with an increasingly complex world. Schwartz's next work should be decision making in the investment world. He's already done all the ground work.