My choices, the issues they cause and the potential solution

Cast your minds back just shy of 48 hours (at the time of writing). It's Wednesday evening and I'm biking home from work and I'm listening to RadioLab's show about choice. They start talking about the more choice you have, the more likely you are to make the wrong one and they use an example of someone wanting to buy an apple at the local market and the ones who just pick one are considerably happier with their choice than those who deliberate over what apple they want.

I thought to myself that that was an interesting thought. The more options you have and the longer you take ends up making the situation worse and you end up with something that you don't want.

Those that have spoken to me this week know that I have had a difficult week due to a discussion between myself and a friend of a friend (but not my friend) and it got me re-assessing a lot about how I approach things and how most of my choices are generally just 50:50.

I also mention in a previous blog entry  ( http://www.nathanjackson1984.blogspot.com/2012/01/what-i-wish-i-was.html ) that I am constantly deliberating over the effects of my choices and I think that makes it worse. I can only have two choices and yet they form into long "what if" scenarios and I just start weighing everything up to the point where I sort of forgot what I am actually thinking about.

So after this difficult week I have decided that for smaller decisions I'm simply going to flip a coin, that way I am freed from the decision making and it frees up a lot of time and keeps me from stressing out.

Now when I say small decisions, I mean the following sort of situations;

• Should I have cereal for breakfast?
• Should I put that as a wallpost on Facebook or a message?
• Should I go to watch that film?

Stuff that like, stuff that has minimal impact. That way I don't have to stress about that sort of stuff and I think that will stop me being as worried about stupid little things (which I know certain people will be delighted to hear).

Now, I would stress that I still do plan on putting a lot of thought into much bigger decisions, stuff that you can't just put down to a toss of a coin.

It's a start at least.