I’m currently skim-reading The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz. If you haven’t already heard, his thesis is that too many choices make us unhappy because we then stress out about trying to make the right choice. So maybe we shouldn’t have so many. He opens the book with the example of buying jeans.
“I want to buy a pair of jeans–32-28,” I said.
“Do you want them slim fit, easy fit, relaxed fit, baggy, or extra baggy?” she replied. “Do you want them stonewashed, acid-washed, or distressed? Do you wantthem button-fly or zipper-fly? Do you want them faded or regular?”
I agree with a lot of what he says, but can’t help thinking that it’s a problem of filters.
Last year I in New York I somehow lucked out and shared an apartment with three beautiful girls. What more could a guy ask for when he moves to a new city? Here we are on a rather strange night:
Anyways, I digress. The point is, I needed new jeans…
Well, that’s not entirely true. What happened was one day Michelle says to me, “Stan, we love you, but those jeans are so hideous that we can’t let you walk around in the apartment wearing them.” And so I learned that I needed help. The next day they took me shopping and picked out a few pairs that looked really good.
In a store full of only jeans, I didn’t sweat my choice because I was there with my trusted experts.
I think this is an important strategy for surviving in a world of abundant choices. If you can find someone you trust who can make the decision for you, then you’re off the hook.
Put another way: In the old days, distribution channels and geography provided a default set of filters on your choices. We can’t turn back the clock on those filters, so we need to increase our ability to use the filters like experts in our social network.
And using your experts is a big part of our latest project at Lijit.
That’s my thinking out loud for the day. Thanks for choosing to read this blog out of the 55 million of them out there! (For more of my talented ex-flatmates, check out the video … sorry Stephenie! 🙂
Stan,
I just finished reading “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson. Research confirms your suspicion that with good filters, people actually end up effectively choosing from a wider range of options.
It is one of the main underpinnings of the long tail – that the internet is evolving to create the better filtering, recommending and finding mechanisms so people can decide and then find what they’re looking for from a nearly infinite array of choices.
Cheers
Don Jones
http://www.VentureDeal.com