IS MORE REALLY MORE? The Hidden Cost of Too Much Choice

Welcome to the third episode of Vita with Alita! I am super excited to dive into today's topic: CHOICES!!!! In a world where we have SOOOOO many options for almost e-v-e-r-y s-i-n-g-l-e thing - I for one, am just confused. How do you go about navigating the sea of options? Where do you begin? Having more options is better...right? Is more truly more? Tune in to find out!

* Paper discussed in this episode: Greifeneder R, Scheibehenne B, Kleber N. Less may be more when choosing is difficult: choice complexity and too much choice. Acta Psychol (Amst). 2010 Jan;133(1):45-50. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2009.08.005. Epub 2009 Sep 19. PMID: 19766972

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I am happy we can share this journey of levelling up, together. See you next week! 

- Alita <3 

Transcript

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Vita with Alita. I'm your host, Alita Gideon, and I am super excited to dive in today's topic, because it is so relevant in my life, it is unbelievable. All right, let's get straight into it.

Choices, choices, choices. We live in a world where we have so many options for literally everything from jam to plants to career opportunities. There are just so many options out there.

And I, for one, am just confused. I am confused. I am overwhelmed.

And in a world of even just how accessible these options are, like online shopping, on online school, online everything. We all need to take ten steps back, rewind, because this girl is just lost in this sea of options. I bring this up because someone like myself, who is on this journey of self-learning, self-improvement, self-self-self whatever, I tend to get quite lost in all of these options because how am I supposed to make a decision and decide on anything when I'm still learning about myself?

And on top of all that, forget the options outside, okay? I'm talking about options about how to even improve myself. The amount of tips and tricks and things that you can do, you can from every single thing, from the way you work out, to the way you eat, to the way you sleep, to what you do, to what you watch, to what you see, who you hang out with.

Go get sun, don't get sun, positive affirmations, gratitude, abundance, blah, blah, the list goes on. Where do you start? What if you're just somebody who's looking to improve themselves, but then you're faced with all of these options?

Where do you start? What do you do? What is the best way forward?

And this is a conundrum I find myself in quite often actually. More than I'd like to admit to myself, but it's something that I face probably every day. In case I haven't mentioned this before, I am someone who makes lists, who plans, who schedules, who is extremely type A.

If you're telling me, all these experts that are out here saying, gotta do A, B, C, and D, you better know that I'm gonna try to do A, B, C, and D to be the best version of myself that I can be. And when I don't do A, B, C, and D, E, F, and G, I just don't feel like my best self, despite all the effort of A, B, C, to E, F, G to be my best self. That's the situation I'm in.

And I wanna use this episode to help myself and help you navigate this little problem that we're both facing. So let's start with the basics. Why are so many options bad?

Isn't it actually a good thing? Don't people actually want more options? Doesn't more options means you have more freedom to choose what may be actually best for you?

In theory, yes, it all sounds lovely and dandy. But in reality, there's this thing called choice fatigue. Let me break it down real quick.

Too many choices can be good, yes, but it can lead to like a no choice kind of mentality or a choice dissatisfaction. So what does this exactly mean? Well, when you have 30 jams to choose from, yes, you have a lot of options and you have the freedom to choose from those 30 jams, but then you just might be so overwhelmed that you say screw it, I don't need jam.

Or you might pick the strawberry jam, go home and eat it, but then think about the peach jam that you missed out on and regret your strawberry jam choice. So at the end of the day, did you really win even if you had 30 options? If you only had three options, you are more likely to actually choose a jam to take home and to truly enjoy your option because you don't feel overwhelmed or you're not living in this regret of like what if I chose another one?

And this is, I think, very applicable in today's time because I find myself thinking about this daily. It's like, if I choose this career option, what if there are all these other career options that I did not go into, that I could have chosen, that I didn't choose, and my life could have been better? And this kind of goes hand in hand with the grass is always greener on the other side, right?

So if we have all of these options, it's not always a good thing. And that's the basics or that's a good summary of what choice fatigue is. And I am, in this episode, hoping to highlight how choice fatigue can even be found in things like not just like consumer goods or career options or the world is your oyster and whatnot.

Even in things that should be simple like self-care or loving yourself or improving or looking to improve yourself. It's no longer simple. It's no longer just sleep eight hours.

And it's the basics. It's sleep eight hours. Yeah, but are you do you have a foam pillow or a water pillow?

Do you have cooling sheets or not? Are you sleeping on your back, on your side, on your stomach? But if you sleep on your face, don't you get wrinkles?

And it's becoming so overwhelming that even the simple act of sleeping, for God's sake. And I think that it becomes counterproductive because because of choice fatigue. You're even not even you're not even likely to make a choice anymore, which is like a hamster wheel of just you wanting to sit and do nothing because you're so overwhelmed by options.

It's something I think that's not always talked about enough. All this information out there telling you how to be the best version of yourself, which is absolutely amazing and I'm very grateful. And I'm not against access to information.

So very brief side note here, access to information is great. It's actually very beneficial. The reason I'm able to make this podcast is because people out there decided to post informative videos on how to do it.

So you can easily learn and apply things in your own life, but I think there's a... it doesn't mean there are no downsides to it. And a downside that I'm seeing in my own life is just choice fatigue of everything, but specifically self-improvement.

As somebody who has the goal to be the best version of herself, where do you start? I'm so overwhelmed, I just don't even want to change anymore. I'm just good where I am.

And that's a conundrum I don't think I'm alone in facing. And that's what I want to shed light on today. Things like workout, eat healthy, meditate, go to the sauna, cut your hair, do a face mask.

All these other random tips from everything, from skincare, to hair care, to body care, to eat, to sleep, to friends, to relationships. It's just overwhelming. And I'm here to acknowledge that and to say you're not alone.

Sometimes I find myself confused, like where in this world of self-improvement do I start? And that's one of the motivations behind this podcast. I wanted to start this podcast because I wanted to see if I can help people just look at their lives the way it is and take things that they're probably already doing and just improve on it, rather than just reinvent your entire life.

You're already sleeping. Okay, what is one thing you can do to make that better? You're already eating.

What is one thing you can do to make it better? It's these little changes over time, so you're not going to make 30 changes at once. It's going to be as slow as like literally one change a week or even every two weeks.

Something like swapping your regular coke for diet coke. It doesn't seem drastic, but you just start there. And then eventually from your diet coke to just like sparkling water, if your goal here is to stop drinking soda, let's say.

These small, small changes will eventually add up to big changes where you can eventually, where you're eventually living as the future self that you envision yourself to be. So that's where my head's currently at. And this episode kind of came together as well because of a study I found about choice fatigue.

And I've always heard about it. You know, you hear about it, things like, lay your clothes out the night before so you don't have to make any decisions in the morning because you're just going to hinder your decision making for important things later on. We hear about it in those contexts as well, but I've never heard anyone talk about it in the context of just living your life.

Now, the study that I will briefly highlight today, it's just to kind of give you a better idea of what is choice fatigue and why it could be detrimental. The study is called Less Maybe More When Choosing Is Difficult. Less Maybe More When Choosing Is Difficult.

Choice Complexity and Too Much Choice. This was a randomized control trial, but they had like two sub-studies, but I'm going to just talk about one of them, because it talks about pens, and pens are simple, and it's a simple way to highlight this kind of complex problem we may be having. And I think it could be applicable to our lives.

Essentially, in summary, again, if you want to read the full study, I have the citation in the show notes, so feel free to take a look at it. Essentially, in the study, telling participants that they had to choose a pen that they would buy. They had different groups and between the different groups, they changed the number of like alternatives.

So like, let's say, pen colors and attributes. So thick, thin, the ink type, whatever. And they went up to like 36 options, I think.

One group literally had three pens. You have a black pen, red pen and blue pen. And one of the groups had up to, I think, 36 options of pens.

And the authors found that the more options that the participants had, the more dissatisfied they were with their choice, or the less likely they were to choose. And this goes back to the jam example that I was giving earlier. When you're presented with so many options, it's...

you're almost likely to just curl into your own shell and just say, you know what? Forget this. I don't need to deal with this.

So I have some sort of like proposition for you. Something maybe to help navigate this world of options that we are living in together. I urge you to kind of make a list of your priorities.

I know, I'm giving you another task in this choice C that I just went on for 10 minutes ranting about, but trust me, I think that this was helpful to me. So make a list of your priorities. And I'm personally talking about in the realm of self-improvement.

So, let's list our priorities. While making this list, there's something that you should always keep in mind. And that is, you can have it all, but you cannot have it all at once.

What do I mean by that? Yes, you might write a list saying, I want to grow my hair, I want to have that body, I want to be on a perfect diet, I want to become a plant lady, I want to do, I want a journal, I want to walk 10k steps a day. It's great and it's fabulous that you have all these goals for yourself.

But we are only human, we cannot possibly do every single thing all the time. So I urge you to reflect and think, what is a priority right now? Let's say you just did a blood work at the doctor and you currently have high cholesterol.

You could want to grow your hair, but I think it's more important you deal with the cholesterol. You know what I'm saying? So, list your priorities.

What is something in your life you want to improve in? Is that building confidence? Is that learning to speak publicly?

Is that just learning or picking up the habit of reading? Is it just as simple as a positive affirmation to yourself in the morning before you leave for work? You just want to drink half a cup more of water?

You want to replace your pop with some healthier alternative? List your priorities and break down those priorities into small actionable steps. So what do I mean by this?

Let's say you pick you want to build confidence. That is very broad. Where do you start once again?

So under that, pick what confidence means to you. Do you want to build confidence, meaning you wear whatever you want and you don't care what people think? You want to build confidence because you want to be able to go up to anybody and start a conversation?

Do you want to build confidence because you want to post online and you're too worried what people might think? I know they all kind of go hand in hand and they kind of all summarize into what people might think of you, but there are different small actions that you can easily target rather than just say I want to build confidence. So pick what that means to you for whatever you list in your priorities.

Now at the top of that list, the first priority is the one we're going to work on. And especially the small actionable task that you put for yourself. Let's say my goal, my priority was to get more exercise.

And one of the ways I want to personally do this is to go on daily walks. You can break that down and say, for the first week, I'm just going to go out, I'm just going to put the shoes on. I know it sounds silly, but once you have your shoes on, you're more likely to go outside.

Putting your shoes on sounds less daunting than going outside. So, to help me achieve my goal of becoming more active, I'm going to just put on my walking shoes. Seems quite simple.

You do that for a few days. Next would be to actually go outside and just walk down the street. Just to the first stop sign or three houses down, or if you live in a building, just walk to the lobby.

The point of all this is you're already putting in the effort to go down the street or to the lobby or whatever. You might as well go an extra five minutes. You already put your shoes on, you already went downstairs, just go for five minutes.

For the first week, you go for five minutes and then you add five minutes every week until you reach your goal. If your goal is half an hour, by week six, you're at half an hour. And it's become a habit because it was small, it wasn't like extremely daunting.

And now you're walking for half an hour a day. And you've tackled the most important thing that was on your list for you. For someone else, maybe walking half an hour is not a priority, or half an hour is not enough.

We're here for you. What's going to help you feel like the best version of yourself? Is it that half an hour walk?

That's what you put on your priority list? That's what you're going to do? That's one method.

And I know, I'm going to have people that are going to say, and I know this because I've said this to myself, I don't even know what my priorities are. They're all equally important to me, and I don't know where to start, I'm still confused, what do I do? Don't worry, we have another solution for you.

Write everything that you think you want to accomplish in the self growth circle down on a piece of paper, on separate pieces of paper, on small little papers, and put it all on the hat and just pick one randomly. Whatever you pick out of the hat, that's where you're going to start. And it's going to be the same concept.

Whatever you pick, you're going to then break down into small, actionable items. And if you cannot pick one small, actionable item, throw it in the hat again and pick. And just start there.

You are going to do this once every month, every two months to add a new item. You don't want to overwhelm yourself with too many choices and too many things that you have to change. You have to allow your brain to accept the new change, to allow yourself to identify with that new change, allow yourself to see yourself showing up and making that new change before you can add a new one.

I know I'm not the first to come up with this concept of like small changes over time or whatever, but I think in the realm of self-help or self-improvement, it's not always discussed and it's not always discussed how to choose where to start. And this is something I use for myself to help me implement better habits in my life, or to help me improve things or aspects in my life that I was looking to improve. And this is for example how I got into working out.

So I've now been weight training since 2018. It was a New Year's resolution. And I know there are New Year resolution haters out there, but I am a firm believer of New Year's resolutions.

I just think it's a great mindset shift and it's a fresh way to start. And it's how I got into weight training. So 2018 came around, I just wanted to weight train.

And the goal behind this was to feel more confident in my body because I was just not feeling it. So I showed up to the gym and I would go, and I made this easy for myself by going to the gym on campus when I was an undergraduate student at the time. So I thought before or after class, if I just have my gym bag, I'll just walk to the gym.

And it was a super cheap membership. And we're not going to get into now my routine and all those things. Those things I figured out as I went.

But the first step of becoming a gym person was showing up and actually going to the gym, right? So day one comes along. I got to the gym building and I was too scared to ask the gym workers for the pin to the change room.

So I literally sat outside of the change room, waiting for somebody to open the door so I can go in. And I don't know what was going on that day, but nobody came for half an hour. I sat there for half an hour because I was too nervous to ask the gym staff for the pin because I thought, I don't know what I thought, that they would think I'm a newbie.

I don't know what was going on in 2018, Alita's mind. But yeah, I sat outside the change room with my gym bag for half an hour because I didn't want to ask for the pin. And then I went home and I was like, what was that, Alita?

But looking back, I'm proud that I actually went to the gym that day, to the change room. I'm glad I went outside the change room that day because that action of showing up is what matters. So then the next day, I went in and I found the confidence to ask for the pin.

And I was clearly overthinking because the person who gave you the pin was so nice, and didn't even think twice about giving it to me or didn't even look at me weirdly in any way. They just gave me the pin. And I went into the change room, and then I went to the gym, and I was too embarrassed.

So I went back to the change room and I sat there for half an hour. And I don't think I've ever told this to anybody, but looking back, I'm glad I even went into the gym that day. Even if I sat in the change room for half an hour, I was just building that momentum.

I think this is a reminder to be kind to yourself and to just to understand that it may be... Change is difficult at first, especially if you're somebody like myself who over thinks, somebody who I care. I am starting to care less, but I still care about what people think.

And especially back in 2018, when I was trying this fitness journey, whatever, I was scared of what people in the gym might think. I was scared of what the people working at the gym might think, what anyone might think about anything I was doing, where in reality, I don't think anyone was thinking about me at all. So what's my point with this story?

The point is that now, in 2025, I have been weightlifting since 2018, but that first month in 2018, when I decided that I was going to go to the gym, was just not... It's not what you expect. I was literally scared to ask for the pin of the change room, and that's okay, because looking back, I still went into the gym one day, and I learned and I got better, and now I feel more confident in the gym than outside.

And now when I see a newbie, I make sure to smile, make them feel welcome. It's cool to see how far you've come once you start on taking on a new task. So overall, for this episode, I know it could be overwhelming in this whole sea of choices about where to start when it comes to improving yourself and where to start for anything, any task that you want to do.

Where do you begin? Start by listing your priorities and breaking it down into small, actionable tasks and just do one thing. You don't have to change the world overnight.

And self growth and self improvement is not a one week journey and it's done. It's a lifetime and that should be actually reassuring. You have so much time to get to the goal that you want.

“You don't have to do it overnight. So if you mess up the first week, the first month, the first three months, it's okay. Because yes, you may have messed up but you learned.

You learned and you're better for next time. And that's all that matters. I know it can be overwhelming and choice fatigue is so real, but in the context of self-improvement and in the context of being on this self-improvement journey, I think there's hope and there is...

It's a beautiful thing that there's a lot of choice. And I hope that this episode helped you navigate or helped you better understand how you can navigate all that choice. I thank you for your attention, for your time, for your ears, and I'll see you in the next one.”

From Vita with Alita: IS MORE REALLY MORE? The Hidden Cost of Too Much Choice, Mar 14, 2025
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/vita-with-alita/id1799200065?i=1000699162170&r=1286
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