choices

[darkoshi]

I'm shopping for some curtains for my mom's living room windows.

On Amazon, "Ambesonne" has a seeminginly unending selection of vivid polyester print curtains, in fantastic and unusual designs. But they aren't all shown on one page; each page has about 40 choices, and I keep finding more pages. I've made notes on a few choices that might be good for my mom's room. But I'm horrible at making a decision when there are more choices I might not have looked at yet; it makes me want to keep looking and looking and looking.

I remember reading once that when it comes to choices, some people will look until they find something they like, and then choose that and be satisfied with it. Other people don't feel good making a decision until they've looked at all the possible choices. I definitely fall into the latter camp.

Comments

[randomdreams]

A number of people have presented the decision paralysis discussion, but Barry Schwarz in "the paradox of choice" stated it most similarly to what you're talking about.

[darkoshi]

I can't remember or find the original article I read (I had intended to write a post about it a while back, but never got around to it), but the below one discusses it too, and mentions both Barry Schwartz and Herbert Simon:
https://www.psychologistworld.com/cognitive/maximizers-satisficers-decision-making