Skip to main content

How I make choosing easier


In Sheena Iyengar’s TEDx video (2011), she describes four techniques you can use to improve choosing or decision-making. These techniques included cut, concretize, categorize and condition. Each technique is unique, and I have used these at one point or another in my life. As Iyengar describes it, she says to “be choosy about choosing” (Iyengar, 2011) which is a brilliant statement that summarizes her video about making choices. Whether you’re a child or an adult, everyone goes through each day having to make many decisions. All too often, we over complicate scenarios in which we could have used these techniques to improve our decision-making. The two techniques I’d like to discuss are cut and categorize.
Cut or cutting, involves reducing or outright eliminating choices from the decision matrix. In order to make choosing easier, we must reduce the number of choices. Iyengar (2011) points out the choice overload problem, where as consumers, we are overloaded with far too many choices and that can make a simple decision much harder to make. My experience with cutting has been a positive one, as it allows me to focus on a smaller number of solutions. This has given me the opportunity to be more efficient in my decision-making, mainly because I’m not spending more time debating a choice. I recently used this technique when I was evaluating how to place an airport tenant in the terminal. Instead of using all our terminals to decide where to put them, I cut our largest terminal out of the decision and focused on the smaller terminal. As a member of an organization, I used the cut technique when designing a training program for our customer service agents. An airport is naturally a very big and complex place and there are a lot of topics we must train our staff, so they understand how to assist passengers. By categorizing all the training into sections of the airport, it made the training much simpler to provide to the agents and easier for them to understand. Cutting has allowed me to avoid the choice overload problem in both examples.
Categorizing is a way to take many choices and put them into smaller groups known as categories. Iyengar (2011) provided another great example of how the average financial planning process involves far too many options. As she puts it, “more choices mean less diversification of money” (Iyengar, 2011), which can lead to fewer actual retirement options and that may lead to a poor retirement plan. By using categorizing, I’m able to take multiple options and combine them into categories that are simpler to understand. Rather than individual choices, I can now see that these options are segmented into specific categories. This gives me the chance to understand fewer options because all the many choices I had to make are now in an easy to understand format. I used categorizing technique last winter when I needed to give a presentation on development opportunities to our business development group. Rather than list all the developments separately, I put them into categories so the group would only see two categories of topics, rather than 10 topics. This gave me a chance to give more categories with fewer choices and resulted in quicker decision-making by the group. As a member of an organization, I used the categorizing technique in a similar fashion when I was responding to a survey for selecting our retirement accounts. As the previous example states, more choices may mean less savings for my retirement. I opted to categorize many of the retirement options into just a few groups, which allowed the organization to ask more direct questions, select accounts faster and resulted in simple and solid retirement plan choices.
Spending time thinking about the process of decision making can have significant payoffs, however, because it can help you improve the quality an effectiveness of your subsequent choices (Hoch, Kunreuther, & Gunther, 2001, p. 14). By taking the time to cut or categorize choices, we can give back to ourselves in ways we didn’t see the first time. The other two techniques Iyengar (2011) describes, concretize and condition, can also make it easier to decide, however, I find each of these options used much less frequently in my everyday life.
References
Hoch, S., Kunreuther, H., & Gunther, R. (2001). Wharton on making decisions. New York: Wiley.
Iyengar, S. (2011, November). How to make choosing easier. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/sheena_iyengar_how_to_make_choosing_easier#t-915761

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tipping Point

  Tipping Point There are many ways to describe how a lot of little things can add up to make a big deal. Historically speaking, the city of Detroit, Michigan, where I have spent a lot of my time as an adult, experienced “white flight” in the 1960s, where white families reached a tipping point and moved to the suburbs when black families moved into predominantly white neighborhoods. But from a career or work perspective, it can be really easy to let small, almost meaningless things cause us to reach out tipping point, or snap. “Emotional intelligence (EI) is a convenient phrase with which to focus attention on the underlying emotional components of human talent” ( Boyatzis , 2006, p. 124).  As I continue to learn and grow more into the leader I know I can be, EI continues to be at the forefront of many discussion I have with people. Most recently, I experienced a tipping point at work where I was frustrated with the lack of effort by our legal team in getting back to me wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lessons from Obolensky

  Obolensky Asks Questions In chapter 1, Obolensky (2010) asks three reflective questions and if I were able to respond, I’d say a number of things related to leadership over time. I strive to learn from those around me, but that doesn’t always end up being the case. Most of the time I’m open to other’s knowledge about subjects and some of that rubs off on me. As is the case with leaders, I’ve had a lot of them, and some were great and others not so much. But my attitude has changed about the leaders in my life. I’ve learned to understand which ones I can align with, which has improved my overall career experience. My attitude towards leaders has changed directly because of my understanding of how leaders have impacted my life. I want to be around empowering and transformational leaders, but also those that use situational awareness and are authentic. These attributes are what I find that influences me to be more successful.   I’d like to tell you a story about my grandp...
Post a Comment
Read more

My Strengths and Weaknesses

  My Distinctive Strengths I feel like a lot of what I do I do really well. When I put my mind to it, I believe I can do whatever I want. I know that I’m well organized, I’m a great communicator, I’m someone that recognizes strengths in other people and I’m also great at building people up. My Potential Strengths I know I can do better in some areas, but certain things prevent me from accomplishing them. Namely, if I don’t already have work in my queue, I’m really not that interested in adding it. This also adds to a lack of focus, which is something I know I should do better. Also, I think I could do a better job at remembering things if I applied myself more to the situation. Dispositions That Support Me My positivity is at the top of the list for me that I don’t want to change. I get so much of my mojo from being and staying positive that I can’t see myself changing this. I also think that my faith is something that I wouldn’t change, unless I did it for myself. That i...
Post a Comment
Read more