And we choose to do this...
We have too much choices in urban USA and western Europe. So many choices that we pack our days to a point where we have to grab our day planner to schedule time with our loved ones. It’s crazy and it’s exhausting.
My friend Vincent Tamariz, who is a pediatric emergency room physician posted a link to a recent New York Times article about ‘decision fatigue’, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue. The article describes a study of decision made by Israeli Parole Board Judges. The presumption was that Arab Israeli prisoners may be less likely to be considered for parole than Israeli Jewish prisoners that have served the same amount of time for similar offenses. It turns out race is immaterial. The most important factor in determining whether a prisoner was granted parole was the time of day the judge decided on the prisoner’s case.
Prisoners whose cases were reviewed early in the day, were twice as likely to get paroled than prisoners whose cases were reviewed at the end of the day.
By the end of the day the judges were too tired to decide anything and not granting parole was a safer choice. It was a ‘non-decision’ so to speak. After making decisions all day long they couldn’t make decisions any more.
Having a lot of choices becomes difficult at a certain point because we all get too tired of making decisions about everything. So when we get to the super market we can’t even decide about something as simple as breakfast cereal.
It’s one of the reasons I love being in Motta. Life is easier with less choices in some regards. It’s why 2000 doctors, nurses, lawyers, TV producers and financial advisers sign up every year to bicycle 500 miles in one week and sleep in tents, eat bad food and use portable toilets. It’s pretty simple living for a week.
The only decision to make in the morning is how many clothes to wear.
In the evening it’s:”Which of the 4 flavors of beer should we try tonight?”
Aw, choice, it’s a blessing and a curse.
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