One approach for dealing with decision paralysis that I’ve found helpful is to proceed by making a series of concrete pairwise comparisons rather than by trying to compare several different alternatives simultaneously. The goal is to first identify an option that one is at least minimally satisfied with, and then compare that default to some alternative. If, and only if, one concludes that the alternative is superior to the original, this alternative becomes the new default against which future alternatives are compared. One then repeats this process as many times as necessary to deal with the options one hasn’t yet evaluated.
(I’m not claiming any originality here; the approach seems so obvious that there’s probably a name for it. Yet it is often overlooked, so it seemed worth mentioning.)
Yeah, agree that this is a simple but useful idea!
One concern I would have with this in some situations is that it might cause you to anchor on your initial option too much—you might miss some good alternatives because you’re just looking for things that most easily come to mind as comparable to your first option. But I don’t know how often this would actually be a problem.
I’ve come across a development of this technique in a management decision making course. It’s known as even-swaps and it’s helpful to choose among hard-to-compare options. However, Jess’ comment below correctly picks on one of the downsides of such approach: our pairing of choices may not have a neutral effect on the process.
Thanks for writing this, Jess!
One approach for dealing with decision paralysis that I’ve found helpful is to proceed by making a series of concrete pairwise comparisons rather than by trying to compare several different alternatives simultaneously. The goal is to first identify an option that one is at least minimally satisfied with, and then compare that default to some alternative. If, and only if, one concludes that the alternative is superior to the original, this alternative becomes the new default against which future alternatives are compared. One then repeats this process as many times as necessary to deal with the options one hasn’t yet evaluated.
(I’m not claiming any originality here; the approach seems so obvious that there’s probably a name for it. Yet it is often overlooked, so it seemed worth mentioning.)
Yeah, agree that this is a simple but useful idea!
One concern I would have with this in some situations is that it might cause you to anchor on your initial option too much—you might miss some good alternatives because you’re just looking for things that most easily come to mind as comparable to your first option. But I don’t know how often this would actually be a problem.
I’ve come across a development of this technique in a management decision making course. It’s known as even-swaps and it’s helpful to choose among hard-to-compare options. However, Jess’ comment below correctly picks on one of the downsides of such approach: our pairing of choices may not have a neutral effect on the process.