There’s a picture that used to hang on the wall in my childhood home.
I’m probably 8 years old in this photograph. I’m wearing slacks and a button-down shirt. My chin is resting in the palm of my hand as I peer over a chessboard.
My parents have long adored this picture. Its candid nature seemed reminiscent of an oil painting. And it captured my essence as a child — pensive, quiet, and conscientious.
An image like this might seem to be a prelude. It might appear to be a hint of what was to come. If I took such a calculated approach to a complicated game back then, one might think, I’ve surely grown into a master tactician by now.
But appearances can be deceiving.
Yes, I was staring at a chessboard. But there were no kings or queens or rooks atop it. In their place were nondescript circular game pieces, which were either painted black or white.
Yes, this image was of me playing checkers.
Why was I so pensive, so stoic? Why was I so indecisive while playing such a straightforward game?
It all had to do with the burden of choice in my midst.
Give me liberty or give me death!
Such were the famous words of Patrick Henry. This rallying cry, uttered during a speech at the Second Virginia Convention in 1775, helped inspire the Declaration of Independence a year later. And its legacy perseveres in our society today.
Freedom is a hallmark of our nation. The liberty to chart our own path is paramount.
But for all the time we spend defending this right, we forget one thing. The actual process of choosing between options is extremely difficult.
You see, choice introduces us to both reward and risk. If we choose properly, we find ourselves in an advantageous position. But if we don’t, we face the embers of rebuke and the sting of regret.
In the moment, it can be hard to identify which decision will lead to the right outcome. It’s as if we’re playing Let’s Make a Deal and guessing what’s behind each door.
So, we waver. We procrastinate. We do all we can to mitigate the damage of a wrong choice.
And in the process, the decision gains mass. It transforms into an option anvil, weighing us down.
Yes, it sure seems liberty comes with its own set of shackles.
Steve Jobs was a visionary. A pioneer. An empire builder.
The legacy of Apple’s founder is multifaceted. But one aspect of it is particularly poignant.
Jobs was known to wear the same outfit to work, day after day. Tennis shoes, jeans, and a black turtleneck. That look was omnipresent in the keynote addresses Jobs delivered year after year. And it became synonymous with Jobs himself.
Why would Jobs opt for such a basic wardrobe? Why wouldn’t he use some of his vast fortune on flashier styles?
It was all a matter of choice.
As the head of a leading technology company, Jobs had plenty of monumental decisions to contend with each day. He didn’t want his choice of clothes to be one of them, so he removed any ambiguity from the equation.
Eventually, others in the tech industry followed this principle. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was known to wear hoodies to the office each day. Disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes tried to evoke Jobs with her own set of black turtlenecks.
This all might seem quirky and quaint, particularly to those of us far removed from Silicon Valley. But there’s something deeper at play.
Even though these tech tycoons had enormous power and influence, they still recognized the toll that decisions can exert. So, they sought to budget their energy, expending it on only the most consequential of choices. It was their way of making that option anvil just a tad lighter.
We might not have the means to get a wardrobe of black turtlenecks. But we can still emulate the Technorati in this area. And we stand to come out ahead for doing so.
It was the experiment that changed everything.
Back around the year 2000, psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper set up a table of jam samples at a supermarket. The jams were free to try, and shoppers even got a coupon for taking a sample.
It all seemed simple enough. But there was a catch.
The amount of jam available for sampling was not constant. On one day, shoppers saw six options at the table. On another, they saw 24.
And that difference in sample size led to differences in behavior. Far more people bought jam when they had six options to choose from than when they had 24 to consider.
These results might seem counterintuitive. In the land of Give me liberty or give me death, going with the narrower solution set seems downright unpatriotic. And yet, The Jam Study proves that abundant choice can overwhelm us. The option anvil is quite real.
There are reminders of this research all around us. For instance, modern restaurants will often model their menus after Chipotle or Five Guys, rather than The Cheesecake Factory. And many service providers have bucketed their offerings into three tiers, rather than selling individual products piecemeal.
These businesses have done their homework. To them, the cost of indecisiveness outweighs the benefits of expansive choice.
And yet, we individuals still find ourselves behind the curve. We demand all the choices, even though it’s obvious that we buckle under their weight.
It’s a grim scene. But the die is not cast.
We can still chart a more sustainable destiny. We can note the impacts of a gauntlet of decisions. And we can be intentional about which ones we should pursue.
Yes, this process gives us one more decision to navigate. And no, it doesn’t mean that we get exactly what we want all the time.
But such a tradeoff can help improve our stamina. It can make us more adaptable, focused, and resilient. It can get free us from that option anvil, for once and for all.
I believe that’s a choice worth making. Do you?