Too Many Choices Are Paralyzing You—And It’s Not Your Fault

You’re standing in the cereal aisle for a half hour and, yet, you can’t pull the trigger. Or you’ve already loaded Netflix for the third day straight, scrolled around for 20 minutes and then gave up on finding something to watch because making a choice was just too much work. Perhaps you spent hours reading up on the “best” coffee maker and in the end left without making a purchase, afraid you would make the wrong choice.

That’s decision paralysis, and modern life is actively drowning us in it. Here’s what’s frustrating: choice is supposed to be empowering. The right to choose has got to be empowering, no? But there’s a critical mass at which alternatives cease to help and start to hurt. Too many options, and your brain can essentially lock up under the weight of so many variables and what-ifs. This isn’t a personal failing or immaculate indecisiveness — it’s actually a logical response to cognitive overload.

The Paradox of Choice Is Everywhere

More options, less fulfilling: The psychologist Barry Schwartz labeled that decades ago, but it has become exponentially worse with the internet. You’re not just choosing among three varieties of running shoes at your nearest big-box store — you have hundreds of options, thousands of reviews, all a click away.

This overload shows up even in leisure activities that are supposed to be relaxing. Faced with endless possibilities—whether it’s what to watch, what to order, or even which game to try when you decide to play blackjack online—your brain still treats it as a high-stakes decision.

Every decision comes at a cost — if you had three choices, choosing one meant forgoing the other two. Manageable. When you’re offered fifty options, choosing means saying no to forty-nine others. Your brain is trying to evaluate all those missed opportunities, and it’s just exhausting.

The fear of regret falls away: If you don’t have a ton of different alternatives — if there are just a few things in play — you can make a choice and feel fairly comfortable about it. With choices infinite, there will always be that voice whispering that the right choice is just one more hour of research away. And there you are still looking, comparing, second-guessing and never deciding.

Your Brain Can Only Do So Much

You can think of your brain as a computer with limited RAM. Each decision you have to make demands processing power. Those small decisions — what to eat for breakfast, what route to drive to work, what shirt we are going to wear — there is a cumulative effect. By the time you have a larger decision to make, your willpower reserves are already running on empty.

This is what we mean when we say decision fatigue is real. That’s why you can make thoughtful food choices all morning, only to find yourself face down in a pint of ice cream before 10 p.m. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest the faster-paced life we lead is simply sapping your ability to make decisions faster than you can recharge it.

The Analysis Paralysis Trap

Maximizers vs. satisficers: Some people are maximizers — they want the single best option and are willing to keep looking until, porous with exhaustion, they’re satisfied that it has been uncovered. Then there are the satisficers — they have a set of criteria for what is good enough and as soon as they find someone who meets it, they’re satisfied. Maximizers are not “better” than satisficers, but they tend to fare worse in high-choice environments.

Perfectionism only inflames the problem: You’ll drive yourself mad doing endless research, comparisons and what-ifs if you have to make “right” choice every single time. The irony is that all this workmanship seldom results in noticeably better outcomes than if you make a reasonable choice and move on.

Breaking Free From Choice Overload

Establish constraints before you begin: Rather than scanning all forty-seven cereals, pick three parameters first — say, under $5, whole grain, low sugar. All of a sudden you’re picking between four instead of forty-seven. Constraints aren’t what hold you back — they free your mind from cognitive overload.”

Apply the ‘good enough’ rule: For low-impact choices, try picking the first option that meets your basic criteria. That’s it. Not a single moment of second-guessing, no “let me just check one last thing.” It leaves your decision-making energy for the decisions that actually count.

Time-box your research: Allocate yourself a limited amount of time to do research for a decision — 30 minutes, an hour, whatever feels right — and then make the best choice you can with the information you have. Perfect information doesn’t exist, and we shouldn’t chase after it.

Wrapping Up

Choice paralysis isn’t occurring because you are indecisive, or overthinking everything — it’s happening because you’re a regular human being trying to go about life in an environment with an abnormal amount of options. Your brain is optimized to make a choice from among a small number of options, not the infinity you face every day in modern consumer culture.

Relax, the answer isn’t to sit around beating yourself up over your inability to choose; it’s more about recognizing when you’re in cognitive overload (bring that one out at parties) and making a decision to constrict your available options before they turn you into a zonked-out, scrolling zombie. Sometimes the best thing to do is just to make a choice — not the perfect one, not the optimal one, but a good enough decision that allows you to move on.

The hours — and hours — you could save by not fretting over every choice? That’s the real prize.