How to Make Better Decisions Using a Random Favorite Picker
I once believed only CEOs and surgeons have decision fatigue. Last Tuesday, while I was agonizing over which one of the same six restaurant-food apps to choose for a date night, after reading reviews on restaurants I had rejected twice already, the whole process took its toll, and I just nuked leftovers. I looked at myself, and I realized, I never lacked for choices. Too many paired with my brain’s beingness stuck from looking for that “perfect” one.
That’s when I began playing with the random ultimate favorite pokemon picker, and that will make a small decision forever different in my thinking from I now on!
Why, Your Brain Struggles With Simple Choices
It is not just that the number of good options may be five times as hard to pick as between two average options, but there is a reason why that is. In fact, it is the paradox of choice, as the larger the number of choices you present, the more you expend mental effort in the comparison, and the less content you’ll be with what you selected. This is something I have seen in my own experiences always. If one of my friends suggests one film that I’ll watch with pleasure. Show me a four hundred thumbnail, streaming webpage and I’ll shut the laptop down and go to sleep.
A random favorite-picking side-steps this altogether. You input a list of your favorites (such as restaurants, movies, songs on a playlist, and weekend plans etc.) and it selects for you. No weighing, no second-guessing, no 15 tabs left open! Just an answer.
It’s Not About Giving Up Control
The first I told it to a fellow working colleague she laughed and replied, “So come to think of it, a wheel opts you on how you live your life?” Fair reaction. However, that’s not quite the case. You’re not throwing away opportunities to make a decision — you’re not taking up jobs that you don’t like or relocating from far away. You’re doing it because you are bored and think it is high stakes because of repetition.
Consider all the little decisions you make during the day. What to eat. What to wear. What to play in the background when doing laundry. How to pick the next song.Choosing which song to play next. These decisions are insignificant on their own, but taken together take away a bit from what scientists refer to as cognitive bandwidth, or the amount of mental energy you have available for other important decisions at the end of the day. All your correct decisions that don’t end up on a chip on the back of the net free up energy for the ones that do!
Here’s how I am using one
I’m very lazy these days when making artists’ books. I can’t decide what I am going to make for dinner. I list off 5 – 7 meals that I would actually EAT – NOT just like, but would actually eat.I list the meals off which I will really eat – NOT just “like” eating, but really eat. I take them through a random favourite Fire Type Picker, and I take what it pulls out. Never re-rolled due to a desire for a different answer. That’s not the idea.
I’ve begun to work with:
- When I or my partner constantly asks the other, “what do you think you want to do” when we’re outing on our free days
- Name calling people who choose their own books during book club.Name-calling who did not choose their book during book club.
- Exercise programs – the 40 minutes that I spent deciding what to do at the gym, I could have been working out!
- Use Playlist songs for background music while I do not have to make a music selection myself
What seems to be the common denominator with all of these scenarios is that nothing was wrong, and as such the “best” of options was almost non-existent. It was produced under pressure for no reason.
The key to making this work is the psychology behind it
The best surprise for me. When they pick a thing I don’t really feel disappointed cause it is not the one I would have picked as well, I just get a top of a relief I don’t know what it is but some sort of relief. There’s a name for this too — it’s related to decision closure. When you make a decision and it cannot be changed easily, your mind ceases to conduct ‘what if?’, and simply adjusts. That adjustment takes place on a fast pace – sometimes in only a matter of minutes.
That’s compared to making the decision for half an hour and making a decision. No peace is that like. You see the itch which says, “What if it had gone the other way?” The randomness somehow removes that urge to cause itchiness – curiously – because there was never a “you” attached to the result. No one is to be held responsible, no regrets to be felt.
When Not to Use One
I’m being totally honest here as I feel this kind of tool can be over hyped at times. Random favorite picking is excellent for situations where the amount or value of the items to be picked is about equally distributed. Never for decisions with real consequences, such as financial, health, or decisions involving lives of others’ or choices where a one option is truly better-informed than the other. Don’t go for the “let’s flip a coin” approach if you are choosing between having two offers with significantly different salaries. Don’t let chance be the deciding factor on commodities where it really doesn’t matter if it gets heads or tails.
Building the Habit
Noticing: I saw when I overthink something mundane, that was the thing that stuck with me. That awareness is the more difficult of the two skills to develop. The next time I do this to myself for a trifle, I say, “Well, no, is that really a decision that you need to bother with more than just the third try? Chapter Two’s response is frequently, yes, more often than I thought.
After a while you will find yourself making decisions that aren’t worth mulling on and handing them off to something random won’t seem like it’s being lazy. It begins to sound like triage, the careful way of guarding your attention to what really matters to pick.
But I’m still thinking too much about so many things. I am not saying that this has helped to heal my brain. But I don’t let dinner break up my evenings because of that it was worth it.
