Paradox of options

If you go to your local supermarket, you will find too many shelves with too many options. I am almost sure that you have never seen all the products they have in their collection. If you start looking for all the options you have, it is almost impossible to make the optimal choice. Then you will either choose the brand you are familiar with or the product you have always chosen. The odds are in favor of the latter option. During the day, you will have tens of these kinds of decisions to make.

Some freedom is a good thing

Most people think that increasing the number of options is mostly a good thing. The world has changed from life with limited options to unlimited options. This change has a cost. You have limited bandwidth in use in your brains. You will get problems with too many options faster than you think. Your decisions will have three different bad outcomes if you have too many options. They reduce the number of decisions you make, they lower the quality of decisions, and the satisfaction you get from them.

Complexity increases all when you increase the number of options. Some complexity is good, but too many different options bring you analysis paralysis. Each added option multiplies the amount of work and time you use for making a decision. You cannot make any decision after a certain amount of options. What happens is that you use lots of time to make a decision that never materializes. And this time is away from other tasks or decisions. Sometimes not making a decision is a good thing. There are decisions you should not make. If the outcome of not doing the decision is better than the cost of lost time, your outcome becomes better and indecision is a blessing.

Too many options create another unwanted consequence. The quality of your decision becomes lower. Too many options can create a situation where you make a decision that is based on less important parameters. Mating is one of these situations. You might encounter many approachable possible partners in a nightclub. The odds of a decision based on outer appearance grow higher. And the outcome will have less quality. If you are trying to find a partner, you can probably increase your odds by going to a party with a smaller amount of possible partners and make a better decision.

Too many options bring less satisfaction. This is maybe the weirdest negative outcome. Why doesn´t it bring you more satisfaction because you have put more effort into making a decision? One reason for this is that you can imagine that many of your options could have been better than the option you chose. You are more interested in what you could have lost than what you did gain from your decisions. The attractive parameters of other options are more represented in your brains than the attractive parameters of your choice. You will start regretting immediately after the choice you made. These are some of the reasons why fewer options after a certain point mean higher satisfaction.

Sweet spot

Any decision you make has its sweet spot in which there is an optimal amount of options available. In this spot, the number of decisions, quality of them, and the satisfaction you get from being optimal. When you have a single option, you feel disregard for the decision. After you have added enough options, you will arrive at your sweet spot of options. If you will add more options after your sweet spot, each of them is bad for the quality of your decision. You can add options forever, but the result is that the odds of having a good outcome becomes smaller.

Sweet spots differ from decision to decision and from person to person. This makes them hard to find. The process of trial and error will help you find them. This requires situations that repeat each other. The problem with this process is that it consumes time. And your time is limited. You have to make decisions about considering your options. These decisions can be more important than your last choice.

More information about the topic you can find from Barry Schwartz´s book Paradox of choice or his interviews on Youtube.

Until next time,

-TT

Thinking in probabilities

One way of understanding the world or your future is thinking in probabilities. Sometimes you do it without knowing it. For example, you go for lunch and choose from different options. You choose the option that you think has the highest probability of being the best one. If you have a habit to make the choice, it is your unconscious mind that does the decision. You did the probabilistic thinking before you established the habit or someone else did it for you, for example, your parents. You live in an uncertain world. You can make better decisions in it by assigning probabilities for different outcomes, and deciding which outcome to aim for.

The quality of your thinking and luck defines the outcome of your decisions

You can divide the probabilistic thinking into two different categories: Certain and uncertain environments. In certain environments, you know the exact probabilities and the best wins. In an uncertain environment, the exact probabilities are unknown and the worse player can win. You can put games like lottery, professional chess, and many games in the casino, like roulette or slot machines into the first category. In the lottery, and in the other games in the casinos, you have fixed probabilities and professional chess is very close to it. In theory, you can always find the right next moves. In practice, you cannot find them when there are enough pieces left on the chessboard. Most of the time, the better player doesn´t lose in chess. And novice practically never wins the expert. Luck doesn´t have a role in the outcomes, casinos do not lose money in these games.

There are always hidden and incomplete information in uncertain environments. You cannot calculate precise probabilities. When you make decisions in these environments, the quality of your thinking and randomness define the outcomes. Some people call randomness luck. It is easy to believe that you made an excellent decision when you were lucky. In these environments, even the best decisions can have undesirable consequences. In the short run, the quality of your thinking matters less in the outcomes than randomness. In the long run, vice versa. Time is the enemy of the bad quality thinking and the friend of the good quality thinking. In these environments, you always have to think about the probability of being lucky.

Think about the probabilities of different outcomes

Thinking about the probabilities of different outcomes increase your probability of being right and making the best possible choice for further action. The simplest situations have only two different outcomes. For example, getting a job after a job interview has only two possible outcomes. You either get it or not. You can think about what is the probability of getting this job and make a decision about spending some time to apply for another job. If you think that the probability of getting a job is high, you can postpone the other application. If you have a low probability of getting that job, you should apply for another job as soon as possible. In reality, things are normally not that simple. You can have multiple outcomes. These multiple outcomes can have different outcomes which have different probabilities. These secondary outcomes can be more important than primary outcomes.

Thinking about the probability of understanding what you are doing

In an uncertain world, you have to live with hidden or incomplete information. You also have to think about the probability of having the right information and about the probability of understanding what the information you have means. These probabilities are never a hundred percent. Certainty doesn´t exist in these environments. You have to add this to your thinking. Depending on the sources, you have different probabilities of having the right information. Official statistics and academic research have a higher probability of being right than getting the information from sources that ”quote” them. Sometimes these people don´t offer possibilities to check the information. To be honest, I have done this sometimes by pure laziness. Be careful of what you read.

You can find ways to verify if the information you have is right. The bigger problems is that you can misunderstand or misinterpet the things you read or hear. Reading text with a foreign language increases the probability of misunderstanding. Your psychological tendencies are even worse enemies. You can read only texts that confirm your beliefs. And you can have many other psychological things that can move you into a wrong conclusion. As you can see, you have to consider many factors, when you make a decision. The more important the decision is, the more factors you need to worry about the probabilities of being right.

Sources:

Thinking in Bets, Annie Duke

Thinking Fast and Slow Daniel-Kahneman

Have a nice week!

-TT

Willpower

Definitions

Willpower can be defined as ”A control of one´s impulses, actions and attention” or as ”A control exerted to do something or restrain impulses.”

Kelly McGonical´s book The Willpower Instinct is maybe the best source for willpower. You can find the link below the text.

Four uses of willpower

You use willpower to control your thoughts, emotions, impulses, and attention. You have some predetermined thoughts that conserve willpower, because you are not seeking the best answer and you settle for them. Deliberate thinking uses lots of willpower and you should avoid it when it is not necessary. You control our emotions. This is called affect regulation. It means you are focused on your moods. You are trying to avoid bad unpleasant moods and trying to concentrate on good ones. Impulse control, like resisting temptations, is the most common way of thinking willpower. It is not the only one. You also need to concentrate our attention on good things to achieve high performance. Willpower is needed for getting things done, as much as resisting doing things. I did not understand this for a long time. Maybe some readers think so too.

Modeling willpower as a muscle

The best way to think about willpower is considering it as a muscle. You can practice to gain more willpower. It atrophies, when we do not use it. You can also use it too much and it gets fatigued. You can have many ways of improving willpower. You can improve your physical conditions. You can practice by trying to achieve bigger willpower challenges. For example, you can try to push through a physical barrier after having a long run or you can push through even though you feel fatigued. You can also try cutting back on sweets or making a smaller budget for groceries, which is harder to manage. You should not start exercising by trying to get big results. Willpower should be exercised by taking small steps first. Then getting bigger ones later.

You make decisions all the time. Each decision consumes your willpower. When you use willpower, your self-control system of the brain becomes less active. Your brain uses the energy reserved for willpower first, because it is one of the biggest drains of energy in your brain. Your impulsive shelves have more power after you have used all the willpower. You make more decisions based on your impulses and cannot think straight. All of this happens, because your brain is interested in getting more energy for survival, not to think properly. Like your muscles, willpower get stronger with having right nutrition. It also gets weaker with wrong nutrition. When willpower is down you give into temptations and your muscles do not function accordingly, if their energy level is low. Muscles also atrophy if you don´t use them. Same goes to willpower. You need to give it challenges like you have to move your muscles.

Willpower is psychological and physical

Prefrontal cortex controls willpower. When you lose your control in this part of the brain, you lose your willpower. Every willpower challenge is a conflict for our decision making system. Its impulsive and rational parts are fighting together. you can succeed in our willpower challenges by using your impulsive system into our advantage. You can program our impulsive system to overcome willpower challenges by using your rational system. This will take some time. During willpower challenges, your psychological state matters. Without getting into details, you need to slow down your internal state. One of the ways of acknowledging the amount of willpower you currently have is how strong your emotional states are. When you are having lower willpower, your emotional state is stronger. Higher willpower means less emotional state of mind.

Willpower is also a physical state. You can change your physiology into a state where willpower is the strongest. Willpower is tied into our body´s natural cycles and the fluctuation of its energy supply. Controlling your brain´s glucoce level is the key. Your willpower is low, if your glucose level is not optimal. With low glucose level, your willpower cannot function properly. Then, your brain moves to the path of least resistance and starts giving in to our impulses. You should eat slow burning foods to keep it in the right level. Then you use our willpower when it matters the most.

Willpower´s friends and enemies

Willpower has many friends. I have mentioned that right nutrition is needed to keep your glucose levels stable through the day. In the short term, you can sometimes settle for the less effective solution. If there is a situation, in which you need willpower temporarily, like making a big decision, when you are tired, willpower can be acquired by eating something sweet. Exercise is one of the best ways to increase your willpower. It has a short and long term effects. Strengthening willpower can happen through exercise that lasts only five minutes. Relaxing is also good for willpower. When you are in a state with physical and mental rest, your brain takes a rest from thinking about the future and analyzing the past.

When you see other people following their impulses, you give in to our temptations more easily. It is even worse when you identify oyurself as like them. This works fortunately both ways. It is easier for you to use our willpower, when you think these people accept the behavior. Resisting temptations become easier in the short term. All you need is about fifteen minutes of exercise and your willpower increases in the short term. Exercice also reduces one of the biggest enemies of willpower, stress, in the long term, stress in the long term. Remembering why you are doing something is a friend too. When you come into a situation, in which you need to make choice about giving into an impulse or resisting temptation, remembering why to resist can help you overcome your temptations.

Lack of sleep is one of the enemies of willpower. When you haven´t slept enough, your cells have trouble absorbing glucose from our bloodstream. Your brain and body become desperate for energy. And they start craving glucose and are ready to find it from anything. Sleeping one night well and long can restore your brain to work in an optimal level. During the day, even short naps may be enough. Chronic stress is bad for willpower. When you are stressed all the time, our body diverts energy from long-term needs to attacking short term emergencies. It reduces the energy your brain uses. Then, both of them are ready to fight stress and our willpower becomes low.

You should have willpower in use, when it is most needed. You should plan our days and design our environments in ways you can optimize its use. Especially, when you know you have some important decisions to make, you should avoid all the unnecessary decisions. The other way is to plan naps or exercise before making the important decision.

Sources: 

Willpower:, Roy Baumeister
The Willpower Instinct, Kelly Mcgonical
The Marshmallow Test, Walter Mischel

-TT

Decision making systems

Definitions

You can define decision-making systems as ”A set of principles or procedures for the action or process of making a resolution or conclusion.” You can also define them as ”A set of principles or procedures for the thought process of selecting a logical choice from the available options.”

Human decision making systems

I will only concentrate on the individual´s point of view in human decision making systems in this text. There is no reason why you shouldn´t use any other tools than your brains while making the decisions. For making things easier, you should separate your own decision making systems into two parts: Intuitive and Rational systems. These systems really work together and both of them are always on, but it is easier to think them as separate systems. Intuitive system works faster and rational system slower.

Examples

You see a flying object getting closer to us and you decide to dodge it or you see a beautiful lady watching you and decide to talk to her. Your intuitive systems is working. You are thinking about bying a car and you first look for the information about different cars and then make a decision to buy one of them. Now your rational system is working.

Intuitive system

This system is based on emotion and impulse. It represents your wants, impulses and gut instincts. It is always on, but your rational system sometimes overrides it. Intuitive system makes the decisions when you are tired and unable to think rationally. It works fast and most of the time you don´t even notice it. Fast response was thousands of years ago a requirement for survival. This system also saves lots of energy. Without it, we couldn´t get many things done. Most of the decisions are made by this system. It influences how you see the world around us: recognizing objects, deciding where you keep your attention, helping you avoid losses, and decides how to react in dangerous situations.

It also has some learned associations and biases. It sees some clues from the environment and makes predictable errors because of them. For example, when choosing a restaurant to eat, you tend to follow the crowd without noticing and choose the place to eat with the longest queues. When this system cannot decide, it asks rational system to take control. When the rational system is busy or exhausted, it has more power in our behaviour.

Rational system

Rational system is normally in the background while intuitive system is working. This system thinks it is the decision maker, but most often time, it is just monitoring your actions. You need this system to make decisions in complex situations or making complex calculations like deciding whether you should change a job or not or think about how much you should pay for an apartment. This system is always monitoring you. And it is working only when needed. It normally has the last word, but it gets exhausted. It normally controls your willpower, but when it is exhausted, your intuitive system takes control and you cannot think and make decisions rationally. This normally happens when you have made many decisions during the day or haven´t slept enough. Sleeping enough and keeping your blood glucose level stable helps you to make rational decisions.

Systems working together

These systems work together. Most often, your intuitive system makes the decisions. It also creates impressions and feelings for the rational system. They are the main sources for the explicit beliefs and deliberate choices of the rational system. Only the rational system can change how your intuitive system works. You need to rewire your brain to make changes by programming the automatic and intuitive functions of attention and memory. This cannot be achieved without the rational system. You need to have a lot of conscious effort to change yourself. Changing your habits, improving your skills, and many other things cannot be done without lots of repetition. Your conscious system is in power until you have repeated the action hundreds or thousands of times. You need your rational system to teach your intuitive system work better. You have your paths of least resistance. Which is normally the intuitive system. You get better results and better skills, when your intuitive systems works better. This is the result of your rational system working better.

You need to use both of our systems to achieve a skill level of an expert. Without enough repetitive conscious thoughts or actions you cannot achieve a level where you can use your intuitive system to react whatever the impulses it receives from the environment. For example, a chess master has thought about some positions on the board in advance or played similar games to find a best possible next move. Then he can intuitively make a decision without using any time to think. Thus, it saves a limited time to complete the game. In most of the physical actions, the speed is one thing that separates an expert from a novice. The other is the quality of the actions. You cannot have better quality of actions without having better mental models learned through rational thinking. When you combine the fast speed and the quality high quality of physical actions you get real expertise.

Sources:

Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
Peak, Anders Ericsson
Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely

Until next week,

-TT