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Hello, everyone! My name is John McGrail, thankfully I do not suffer from buyer’s remorse, and I believe that if you’re not learning, you’re not living. Today I’m going to be talking about the almost crippling nature of indecision.
So, what’s today’s fun fact? The Google dictionary that I looked up defines “choice” as: an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities. It can also be the right or ability to make or possibility of making such a selection. It can be a range of possibilities from which one or more may be selected. Finally, it can be a course of action, thing, or person that is selected or decided upon. The fascinating thing I also found—and this is if I’m reading the Google Books Ngram Viewer correctly, (Where’s Miss Ice Emilee when I really need her?!) the use of the word “choices” in books rose more than 300% in literature from 1900 to 2000. Sign of the times?
Speaking of freaking out over choices, the Friday Forum is always there ready for you—your chance to share what you have been learning. You can add your voice to the Friday Forum in several ways—by calling 3048372278 and leaving a voicemail, going to www.goldenspiralmedia.com/feedback and leaving your feedback by uploading an audio file, using the provided speakpipe widget, or you can type out an email and send it in that way. Don’t say we didn’t give you options!
Now, here’s what I learned yesterday:
25. As of an article I found from July of 2015 there are currently 25 flavors of Oreo cookies. And that’s just here in the United States. There are also other countries that have their own distinctive flavors. In China there’s Oreo Double-Fruit in Orange and Mango and Raspberry and Blueberry crème. In Argentina there’s the popular Oreo Duo, which features a layer of crème featuring two complimentary half and half flavors such as strawberry and vanilla or banana and dulce de leche. Can we get some of those imported over here, ‘cause I don’t think I can find my favorite of the 25 I can get my hands on now. How about going to buy a car? There are 23 models of Chevrolet cars—not crossovers, trucks, SUV’s, vans—just cars that are currently manufactured. Add to that Chevrolet is only one of the estimated 165,000 vehicles produced every day around the world. My jaw dropeth…
My bride and I had a lovely evening a few weekends ago with friends and they were talking about their second child accepting her letter to go to the university that she applied to. Their first child has a year already under his belt at another college. My bride and I have a junior in high school so we are on the cusp of entering the college circus trying to decide where he wants to go, where should he go, can we afford for him to go to “there” if we do get through the first two parts of this decision process. The overwhelming amount of schools is just that—overwhelming, especially when he may or may not have strong leadings about specific schools that he would like to consider.
As I was coming up to the point where I got on board with my new job in January I had no significant leads that were going anywhere until literally I had to make a decision about two very strong options in the same week. The one option would keep us in Salisbury and keep all of our relationships the same and the other would have relocated us to the Atlanta area. The job would be so much more challenging in Salisbury and the job would be a hand-in-glove kind of fit in Atlanta. In the end I chose to take on the larger challenge and keep us here in Salisbury. It will be years until the decision proves itself out to be the right one…
I’ve said time and time again how amazing my bride is. And she is. Now, this is not to say she doesn’t have areas of weakness because she does. She is human after all. An area of weakness that she would definitely own if she were talking to you is that she has a difficult time making a decision. My bride thinks about things—a lot. She can easily overanalyze things and her pros vs. cons list can turn into a paralyzing process. She will go to a restaurant and worry about picking something that she might not like because that is equal to wasting the money paid for the meal. Now, the inability or unwillingness to make a choice can leave her or anyone in a really debilitating state—especially in a world with 25 oreos to choose from! Now I don’t want to leave you with an impression that she isn’t able to make a decision; but she definitely does struggle with making the right or wrong decision based on the ramifications or opportunity cost as the business world calls it of the option that you didn’t choose.
We have four children so we’ve had to tell them that they can participate in one sport and one other outside activity. It’s all we can logistically handle but we talk to parents all of the time that are more exhausted than we are and they have less children than we do. The options of out-of-school activities are staggering and could easily lead parents to do what their kid’s friends are doing just because they made a choice and you couldn’t or you could be led to throw up your hands and tell your kids when they’re done with their homework to color a drawing with the 412 color crayon set. Sigh…
I grew up in the time period of physically turning the dial on your television to change the channel, you wouldn’t really hurt your hand turning the dial too much because there weren’t that many channels to choose from. Today I use a satellite service for television and we have one of the middle tiers so we don’t subscribe to the premium networks that cost more or even the next overall level that expands our channels by another 50-60 additions. 50-60 additions? Are you kidding me? At some point I have to ask have we gone overboard with this whole choice mentality that our society has become? The easy answer is well of course not if it works to your advantage. If all you want to do is watch live and covered sports all day and night long then you’re covered. If you want to be depressed about the state of the world today we can cover it for you 24 by 7. If all you want is quality science fiction like I do, well I guess I’m still waiting. Seriously though, at what point do our brains actually literally explode with all of the choices that we want to make—not to even speak of the decisions that we need to make all of the time?
Here’s what I learned:
I’ve officially become that old guy. I’m only 45 but have become that old guy. You know the one. “Back in my day on the radio we had two rock n’ roll stations, one country, and one classical station to listen to.” Wait for it…”And we liked it!” The sheer amount of choices that we have available to us I think is turning us into things that are not exactly positive. We’ve become entitled. Just because there are so many choices of products and services we get angry when we can’t find something that suits our demands perfectly. We’ve become closed. Because I can listen to 80s on 8 I have no clue on what’s happening in the current music culture. And I might not even want to but I might be missing out on something that I might really like but I’ll never find. Some of us have become paralyzed. Breaking down decisions into what’s really important vs. what would just be an added benefit is coming so blurred that it’s too easy to give up and settle. We now have services that help us to sort through all of the many choices to help us feel successful when the time comes to pull the trigger. Buyer’s remorse in some ways are at least lessened when you drill down and down and down on something like cars.com or other car finding services. And I do appreciate services like Pandora and Netflix that expose you to other songs and artists or programs based on algorithms that analyze what you like and give you suggestions of things to try. The last thing that I think so many choices produces that might not be a good thing is that I think we’re becoming less creative. Look at the movies that are coming up that we are looking forward to—most all sequels or continuations of the same characters and story methods. The whole rebooting movement is not new but it is churning at an unbelievable speed. What if we spent more of that creative energy on something new? Have we run out of ideas? I’d like to think not. Well if you’re like me you’ve got more than a few podcasts to listen to today just to keep up with your chosen subscriptions (I have 13 different subscriptions. What?). I am very grateful that you spent this time with me. I’d like to think it would be one of the best choices of your day. Good luck and don’t be afraid. Make your decisions and don’t look back!
I’m John McGrail, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
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