Good evening everyone! It has been constantly pouring here in the southern Seattle area for almost 24 hours now...actually, that's probably not true. There was a nice little break in the middle of the day where it was only misting, but the sort of mist that soaks you anyway. To be honest, I love this weather. In fact, I wish it was windy and stormy on top of that. At least then it'd seem more like home (yep, I'm homesick for Bellingham, but the rain is still nice.) The sound of the pounding rain often causes me to look out the window at the streetlamp outside to see how much water is falling...and to see if it has turned to hail yet.
That said, I don't like the traffic that the rain brings, and thus, I've spent the day inside (mostly), working on this blog post and other computer-y things while I listen to the rain drown the world outside. To my credit, I have not touched my xbox all day, though I still haven't felt particularly productive.
Coincidentally, I think I've figured out why I'm not feeling productive. Why I feel like I'm getting more apathetic and lazy as summer gets further away and I grow closer to the end of my volleyball coaching season. (Thank goodness my girls stretched things out when they made it to districts, yay!) The reason is: I feel like I have too many choices.
I miss school. I miss the set schedule of things. I miss my professors telling me what to do. I miss knowing exactly what was in store for me the next day. I miss knowing that I only had a few options for dinner that night (whatever was still good in the fridge). I miss the feeling I got whenever I knew I didn't have to do anything that day. Now that my days are free, I dread them because it's a chore to decide what to do all the time. And that's what today's post is about.
THE PARADOX OF CHOICE
I felt it fitting for that title to be ominously large.
This TEDtalk is pretty old...it's from 2006. But I found it while I was reading a Gizmodo Q &A with TED's curator, Chris Anderson. He said it was one of his favorite talks of all time, so I decided to watch it. And it turned out to be pretty relevant, even today, six years later.
Barry Schwartz is a psychologist (no wonder I liked this talk), who studies the place where economics and psychology collide. Now, I know almost nothing about economics, but I am a fan of confluence (+10 for using my word of the week!), and the in-between, linking places is where all the interesting stuff happens.
Mr. Schwartz came up with about a billion good quotes during his talk, but I'll share with you a few of them just to sum things up. First off, he sincerely believes that "the secret to happiness is low expectations." (15:00) Now, I'm pretty sure that's already a cliche. But he does a real good job of elaborating on that, and continues on to show us why the word "choice" is relevant to that cliche. By using a long-winded example of shopping for jeans, he ends up claiming that "adding options increases our expectations". (14:00) And I have to say that over the last month, my sister and I have learned the extent of those higher expectations and are suffering for it...but more on that tomorrow.
The most valuable part of this talk for me was how it addresses the rising rate of depression in this country. I'm far from depressed, but I will admit that I'm overwhelmed by choices. It's evident in my lack of ambition in finding a job, researching all of the important ballot measures I should be voting on in the next week, or even just purchasing a pair of boots to wear with the new skinny jeans I just bought. Barry Schwartz would call this lack of ambition "paralysis", as if I were paralyzed by how many choices I had in front of me.
For people other than myself, this plethora of choices makes them set unrealistically high expectations for themselves and the world around them. Even once they make a choice, the imaginary alternative spawns "regret and subtracts from the satisfaction" you should get from making that choice. (10:30) They might feel like they're being constantly disappointed by the world around them, and end up blaming themselves because they think the choices they make were responsible for their unhappiness. Who else can be at fault if you're the one who's calling all the shots?
Right now, I have the choice to close my computer and go to sleep, and I think that's just what I'm going to do. This talk is not nearly as negative as I made it sound, but it really resonated with my place in life right now--to some specific events that happened this month, but I'll relate all those tomorrow. For now, I'm choosing to start setting my body on a more regular sleep schedule so I don't look so tired all the time.
Goodnight, and happy TEDtalk Tuesday! =)
Interesting. Of course, you know that I'm feeling the same sort of thing about finding a job. I also am trying to go to bed earlier. At 1:30 in the morning, this is still earlier than I usually go to bed. The problem was that I kept being unable to wake up before noon... which means I have only a couple of hours to contact the people I need to contact before they get off of work. What a dilemma.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, I've experienced this sort of depression my whole life. I've never been able to decide what to do. It usually so happens that I understand the criteria that I should have been informed about YEARS after I am forced to make the decisions I need to make in life. I find myself depressed and blaming myself as a sucker. And there's really nothing that I can do about it. It's America. It's industrial society. And it won't change.
You can argue that you can change yourself and you can change your expectations but some expectations have been with us our whole lives. Some expectations are so ingrained, like love, that it requires emotionally catastrophic events to ever change them. In the face of uncertainty, I'm beginning to feel more and more powerless. -.-
Great TED Talk. Saw this one myself almost a year ago, and it's as relevant as it ever was. You highlight the quote that stood out to me the most when I watched it. How is it that, in an era where our freedom of choice is greater than any other in history, levels of depression are more rampant as well?
ReplyDeleteWith all the choices we have to make every day, the number of choice NOT taken is immense. Even once we make our choice, we spend countless times thinking about what could have been. It's enough to render you helpless and apthetic, as he so poignantly illustrates.
A year+ put of college, I now realize that I wasn't unique when I confronted this depression derived from the freedom of choice I hadn't experienced while I was in school. It's one of those many things that your professors didn't prepare you for after graduation.
Coincidently, at the time I first watched this, I was also reading a book ("Little Bets") that highlights the importance of simply acting, and the thinking styles of successful individuals. These influences drove me to do what I once had dreaded; I gave myself a schedule that, like school and homework, I would have to adhere to to be successful.
The importance of having a schedule (even a loose one) cannot be overstated. The difference, now, is that you have the 'choice' of what that schedule entails. If you need to be sending out resumes and contracting prospective employers, then align your schedule to match theirs so that you are active when they are. If you feel you don't know enough about a subject area, write out a pseudo-syllabus with relevant reading materials. Making this CHOICE somewhat guards against this burden of choice.