The Camera You Didn't Buy (and the Photos You Didn't Take)
By Dan Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, adapted from Predictably Irrational.
A friend of mine spent three months choosing between two digital cameras. Both were good. Both were the same price. Both had almost identical features. He read reviews. He visited stores. He compared specs.
When he finally bought one, I asked him how much money the lost three months of photos was worth. Three months of his kids. Three months of birthday dinners and school plays and ordinary Tuesday afternoons that he would never get back. How much would he pay, today, for a few pictures from that season?
He paused. Then he admitted, quietly, that those missing photos were worth a lot more than the price of either camera. Probably more than both, combined.
He'd been staring so hard at the small difference between two near-identical options that he hadn't counted the cost of the staring itself.
There's an old story, sometimes attributed to the philosopher Buridan. A hungry donkey approaches a barn and finds two haystacks at opposite ends, exactly the same size. The donkey can't decide. It stands in the middle, turning back and forth, trying to figure out which haystack is better. Eventually, the donkey starves.
Donkeys, in real life, do not do this. They eat the nearest haystack. Humans do it constantly.
I did it myself, weighing whether to stay at MIT or move to Stanford. Both were wonderful schools. My productivity stalled for weeks while I deliberated. I interviewed faculty. I checked neighborhoods. I compared school districts for my kids. The ironic part is that while I was deliberating about the best place to do my research, my research was stalled.
Here's the rule: if two options are genuinely close, the decision is easy. Not because you know the right answer. Because the gap between the two outcomes is small, and the gap is shrinking every day you spend deciding.
When the options are close, flip a coin.
I mean it.
The coin isn't really making the decision. The coin is breaking the stalemate, so you can notice how you feel about the result. If the coin picks A, and your heart sinks, go with B. If the coin picks A, and you feel relief, go with A. Either way, you're done in thirty seconds.
Congress does this every year, with the delightful twist of being paid to deliberate. Every infrastructure bill, every budget fight, every immigration reform, gets stuck on differences between two nearly identical hay bales. While the committee meets, bridges age, families wait, roads crumble. The cost of the deliberation is enormous. The difference between the two bills, often, is small.
My friend got the camera. The photos he's taken since are beautiful. The photos of the three months he lost, he doesn't have. Those are gone.
When you notice you've been choosing between near-identical options for longer than a sensible person would, remember the donkey. Pick the closer haystack. Eat.
For a deeper perspective, check out Dan Ariely’s books.