When faced with an important or difficult decision, you might think that having more options is always better. But that’s not always the case. Instead, too many choices can slow down decision making and even prevent you from making a choice altogether.
Limiting your choices, on the other hand, can help you focus your time and energy to make better decisions faster and support your team more efficiently.
Read on to learn more about how limiting choices can lead to better decision making and overall efficiency in your personal life and in the workplace.
The Problem With Too Many Choices
As a leader, understanding the decisions you need to make and the options at your disposal helps you prioritize and make informed decisions for your organization. But having too many choices can also be detrimental to productivity, either because you have too many options to choose from or because you must make too many decisions at one time.
When you have too many options, it’s easy to get bogged down in weighing them against each other. Instead of taking action, you find yourself stuck in decision paralysis (also known as analysis paralysis), overthinking the available solutions and second-guessing yourself. You become so afraid of making the wrong decision that you fail to make any decision at all.
Having too many decisions to make, on the other hand, can cause decision fatigue, a phenomenon in which constant decision making compounds to drain your physical, mental, and emotional energy. The more decisions you have to make in a day, the more you struggle to function productively.
In both cases, having too many choices prevents you from leading your team effectively and efficiently.
Positive Results of Reduced Choices
Reducing choices can help avoid analysis paralysis and decision fatigue, enabling you and your team to prioritize and make important decisions faster and more easily.
A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2000 famously found that presenting shoppers with fewer product options — in this case, offering six flavors of jam instead of 24 — not only led to more sales but also increased consumer satisfaction with their purchasing decisions.
While more recent studies have produced inconclusive results about the exact negative effects of having more options instead of fewer, evidence suggests that offering a simplified array of options helps reduce the likelihood of decision paralysis for easier decision making.
Likewise, reducing the number of decisions you have to make throughout the day helps reduce the likelihood of decision fatigue by allowing you to focus only on the most important decisions.
Simplified Decision Making in Action
Just as outsourcing and delegating work frees up time and energy for your most important tasks, limiting your choices — both in and outside of the workplace — frees up time and energy for other, more important decisions.
This is why many successful CEOs wear the same color and style of clothing every day. By eliminating the choice of what to wear from their morning routine, they’re able to dedicate that time and mental energy to making much more impactful decisions for their businesses.
Others accomplish the same goal by having their spouse order for them at restaurants, meal prepping a week’s worth of food in advance, or following strict daily or weekly routines.
Not only do these methods reduce the number of decisions you have to make throughout the day, but they can also help you make — and stick to — better choices overall. Preparing healthy meals in advance, for example, both eliminates the choice of what to eat each day and prevents you from settling for an easy but less nutritious option.
Identifying & Reducing Unnecessary Choices
If you’re experiencing decision paralysis or fatigue — or both — try some of these strategies to limit choices and improve your decision-making processes.
- Share the load. When one person shoulders all the decision-making responsibility, they’re likely to experience decision fatigue and burnout very quickly. Evaluate which decisions must be made by you as the manager and which can be delegated to other team members.
- Implement SOPs and automations. The more routine processes you have in place, the less information you have to remember — and the fewer reminders you have to send your team.
- Establish recurring programs. For processes like CPR training that need to be renewed each year, partner with a provider that can help you manage recurring training and certifications. That way, you don’t have to select a new program and trainer every time someone needs their training updated.
- Tackle big decisions first. If you’re prone to decision fatigue, prioritize making your most important and/or difficult decisions at the start of your day. This ensures you have enough time and energy to devote to the decisions that need it most.
- Create strict vetting criteria. When facing a decision with many options — like CPR training providers or project management software, for example — get clear on your criteria before you start researching. This will help you filter out excess options in advance and avoid decision paralysis.
Finally, don’t be afraid to experiment and embrace trial and error — even with the above strategies. Sometimes, you won’t know which choice is the “right” one until you try it, or until you adapt it to suit your own needs. While this won’t apply to all of your decisions, it can help reduce the pressure to make the “best” decision every time.
Simplified Decision Making for Greater Efficiency
Having too many choices can lead to analysis paralysis and decision fatigue, stalling productivity and decreasing efficiency. By limiting unnecessary choices in your daily routines, you can improve decision making and lead your team more effectively.
If you’re looking for ways to simplify your CPR training process and reduce the number of choices involved, ProTrainings can help you create a group training program that’s streamlined and tailored to your organization’s needs.
Contact us today to learn more about how ProTrainings can help you make getting your staff CPR certified easier and more efficient.