In Brooklyn I can look out my apt window and see at least 3 other apartment buildings. Last night I looked outside at 9pm. Almost every apartment (where the occupants hadn't escaped the city) had their TV on. (One apartment, though, still watches TV with commercials... TV WITH COMMERCIALS).
No one was outside on a street usually filled with laughter, music, yelling, crying, etc. The only choices of what to do were what to watch. FOMO must be at 50 year low.
It was amazing. I, and everyone else, basically had one set of choices — stay inside, sew masks, bake sourdough, watch Netflix, Zoom with friends, or teach your kids (all the while hopefully maintaining your sanity).
Paradox of Choice
Over the last 40 years per capita income has increased drastically while individual happiness has stayed the same. Here's a couple stats from Barry Schwartz's book Paradox of Choice:
In the last forty years, the per capita income of Americans (adjusted for inflation) has more than doubled.
The percentage of homes with dishwashers has increased from 9 percent to 50 percent. The percentage of homes with clothes dryers has increased from 20 percent to 70 percent. The percentage of homes with air-conditioning has increased from 15 percent to 73 percent.
Does this mean we have more happy people? Not at all. Even more striking, in Japan, per capita wealth has increased by a factor of five in the last forty years, again with no measurable increase in the level of individual happiness.
Why is this the case? A case can be made that the major reason is the downsides of increasing choice.
Increase in Choice → Increase in Opportunity Costs
Opportunity costs... the cost of not doing something. This is probably the biggest reason more choices haven't increased our happiness.
Let's compare the FOMO of a realistic Saturday night pre-coronavirus versus the TOKEMO during coronavirus.
Pre-coronavirus vs. Coronavirus options
The key factor is that the opportunity costs from every option we reject take away from the overall desirability of the most-preferred option.
So let’s say after deliberation you choose 'concert on a lake' as your Saturday night activity. The features of the art show and dinner add mental costs that subtract from the satisfaction of the concert on the lake.
You see the art show on Instagram and wonder how much fun it might've been. Or you're cold listening to the concert and wish you were sitting on your warm couch.
The key being that you compare features of each option, not the whole experience. Naval Ravikant has a good comparison when talking about the jealousy we have of others lives —
“I realized that all these people that I was jealous of, I couldn’t just cherry-pick and choose little aspects of their life. I couldn’t say I want his body, I want her money, I want his personality. You have to be that person. Do you want to actually be that person with all of their reactions, their desires, their family, their happiness level, their outlook on life, their self-image? If you’re not willing to do a wholesale, 24/7, 100% swap with who that person is, then there is no point in being jealous.”
Similarly, we're not able to see each option as a 100% swap with another option so we ruminate over the best features of our other options.
Increase in Choice → More Responsibility
"Both men and women marry five years later now than they did a generation ago. People also stay in their jobs less than half as long, on average, as they did a generation ago.
Whereas delaying marriage and avoiding commitment to a particular job would seem to promote self-discovery, this freedom and self-exploration seems to leave many people feeling more lost than found. And as one young respondent put it, “What happens when you have too many options is that you are responsible for what happens to you.”
If you have one option it's no longer an option or a choice, and you are definitely not responsible for the outcome.
Living in a small town in the early 20th century your marriage options were probably not even options. You only had a handful of choices. Now with Tinder/Hinge they look like this...
Increase in Choice → Decision Fatigue
Another big factor, increase in choices has counteracted any time-saving from technology. Even with every new time-saving device (dishwashers, smartphones, apps, etc) we spend more and more time preparing for, making, reevaluating, and perhaps regretting decisions.
Should you buy the cheap but high-sugar pasta sauce, or the mid-tier healthy-ish version, or even the high-priced artisanal sauce and support local businesses?
There are 41 options in the picture. 41! It's mentally fatiguing just looking at these options
Those are just the major downsides, in Paradox of Choice the author covers increased expectations and regret, effects of social media, downside of adaption, perceived experience and more.
I'll spare you and focus on some solutions from the book.
Some Solutions
Embrace certain voluntary constraints on our freedom of choice, instead of rebelling against them.
Aristotle said, “discipline equals freedom”. Committing to run a marathon means you can't go out drinking or eat fast food regularly. But, once you make the decision to run the marathon all your other choices become much easier.
Similarly creating rules, standards and habits for yourself voluntarily decreases choices, which eliminates decision fatigue
Mix downward and upward counterfactuals.
Upward counterfactual: “If I had not eaten so many potato chips, I wouldn't feel ill right now.”
Downward counterfactual: “Oh well, at least I didn't eat the whole Costco bag”
You don’t want to go through your entire life regretting and wishing for better things. As useful as it is to strive to make better decisions, sometimes just say, “oh well, I guess it could have been worse” and move on to the next experience.
Downward counterfactuals are basically what mindfulness and gratitude are all about.
Lower our expectations about the results of decisions.
Try to settle for 'good enough'. This one is near impossible. I can't count how many times I've scrolled through pages of Yelp options increasing my expectations, then only to choose and be disappointed.
This is pretty bad, but maybe never go to Carl’s Jr… one less option.
Make decisions nonreversible.
The very option to allow us to change out minds decreases our satisfaction substantially. Accepting the 'grass is always greener on the other side' allows you to put your energy into improving your decision not second-guessing it.
Pay less attention to what others around us are doing.
Social media and the news are terrible for our well-being. They artificially increase our options far more than anything else in our lives.
Anyone else have this experience?
Immediately we become the kid on the right — "why aren't I working at a cool company like The Athletic?", "why don't I have as many followers?", etc.
Focus on what makes your life happy and meaningful, not the options of strangers.
Pretend we're still in quarantine.
When this is over hopefully we'll be able to take some of the positives out of the quarantine experience mainly the strategies for curtailing our choices and therefore growing our happiness.
Recommendations
📚 Book
Paradox of Choice — Hopefully the above essay covers everything you want to know about choices, but if you want to go deeper the book has some further points. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the book unless you really like this stuff though. My notes on the book here.
📰 Article
My Restaurant was my life for 20 years. Does the world need it anymore? — Long but in-depth look at what it’s like owning a small restaurant in the East Village during Coronavirus.
🎬 Movies/TV
Devs — Watched this recently. Highly recommend if you like dark tech thrillers. By same director as Ex-machina. Feels like an extended Black Mirror episode but not as dark. Great visual shots of SF cut to ambient music.
🎶 Music
Nightcall (Kavinsky) — Similar to music and scenes in Devs, Nightcall is perfect to be played with dark city visuals.
👀 Other Stuff
The 'Fear of missing out' Wikipedia page clearly has not been updated in a while...