The Art of Deciding
Categorize Your Way to Smarter Choices
We are all connected by choice. We choose to do this activity or say that one thing, or rather, we choose not to say that thing, only to regret it later. We choose what to eat, what not to eat, or to argue with our partner about what to eat. We choose our music, our clothes, our jobs, our cars, our entire lives. We choose everything about our lives.
If the power of choice is so prevalent in our daily lives, then why does it feel so overwhelming? When choices are taken away, why do we miss them? Why would we rather have the illusion of choice than make an actual choice?
According to a 2016 Psychology Today article, we scurry through life making 35,000 choices a day. A more recent Noom study, released on Mirror UK, stated that the number was closer to 122 choices per day. Taking both articles as valid, we make 122 to 35,000 choices a day. Accounting for sleep, that means the average person makes one choice every two to eight minutes.
In the Noom study, the chief psychologist, Andreas Michaelides, Ph.D., described the toughest choices for everyone sampled, who were all British. We’ll try not to hold that against them.
Top Hardest Choices
What to Watch
What to Eat
What to Wear
Buy New or Buy Used
Exercise or Not
Bed Time
One more Biscuit
Ask Someone Out
Meal Prep or Not
Go Out or Stay in
What Book to Read
What Dish to Eat
Eat at Home or Get Takeaway
Where to Vacation
What Time to Get up
Social Plans
Birthday Plans for Self
Mode of Transport
Appetizer or Dessert
Time for the Alarm
Do you agree with these? There are some in that list where past relationships have fallen apart. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that out of the twenty toughest choices surveyed, seven of those dealt with food. In a study published by a weight loss company, thirty-five percent (35%) of the results of the toughest of the 122 choices made per day deal with food. It seems a bit slanted.
That’s the problem with choice and studies surrounding it. While each of the eight billion (and climbing) members of humanity has their individual perception, what is missing is a fundamental truth. Each of the eight billion (and counting) people is their own universe. That is a true multiverse.
Every person has their own morals, beliefs, perceptions, desires, and characteristics. This is part of what makes psychology and sociology so interesting. In the eight billion (and counting) individual universes, there are fundamental commonalities among them. The fact that thirty-five percent of the toughest choices surround food isn’t surprising.
If we choose from a range of 122 to 35,000 choices a day, then how can we not get overwhelmed by it all? The Noom study recommended journaling. There is a litany of blogs, papers, and books on how to choose what, when, where, and why, but there aren’t any (that I’ve seen) that give the solution I’m going to give.
There are THREE categories for choice
If we make between 122 and 35,000 choices per day, then we make anywhere from 1.33 million to 382 million choices, if you count every choice for thirty years. That’s an incredible number of choices. Those are some unmanageable numbers.
To make more sense of choices, let’s break it down to how many choices we (as humans) make per minute. Accounting for eight hours of sleep, the spectrum of our speed of choice breaks down like this:1
122 cpd to 35,000 cpd
7.625 cph to 2,187.5 cph
0.127 cpm to 36.5 cpm
2.1 × 10⁻³ cps to 0.6 cps
Making 2.1 × 10⁻³ choices per second is pretty slow. That’s 0.0021 choices/second. That’s one choice every eight minutes (roughly). Garden snails move faster than that at 0.013 meters per second. On the flip side, 0.6 choices per second is TONS faster. That’s roughly one choice every two minutes.
Although not every choice can be made in two minutes. Some choices, like some of the toughest stated above, take longer. Other choices, even those on that list, we can decide faster. For example, #9 - Whether or not to meal prep. This choice is negated with a simple clarifier: “Can I cook?”
With this in mind, I’ve developed three different categories of choice to help us decode which choice is which category. Then, using the list above, we can decode the toughest choices of all time into categories, giving us a basis to break them down and solve them.
Category 1
Category 1 choices are the quickest and easiest choices. These choices are binary in their approach and their thinking. It’s either/or. There’s no middle ground. It’s black and white thinking exclusively here. There’s either “Go to Jail” or “Proceed to Go and collect $200.” Often, these choices are solved by our subconscious.
Category 2
Category 2 choices are the “Goldilocks” zone style choices. If you’ve got too much or too little, then it’s a bad decision. But if you’re in the sweet spot of something where it’s right in the middle, you’re in the golden zone. You’re juuuust right. These choices take a little longer to decide, and often, we go back and forth before we find what’s just right.
Category 3
Category 3 choices are the most difficult choices to make. These choices can take days, weeks, or even months to solve. They’re the choices that thought experiments are primed for. These choices are the moral arguments, the hypotheticals, or the “everything is a great option” choice. In this category, there is no black and white. It’s gray and a rainbow. Everything is good and everything is bad. It’s the Schrodinger’s Cat of categories. The choice comes down to which option is preferable to the decision maker.
Taking the list above, let’s categorize them as an example.2
What to Watch - Category 3
What to Eat - Category 3
What to Wear - Category 2
Buy New or Buy Used - Category 1
Exercise or Not - Category 2
Bed Time - Category 3
One more Biscuit - Category 2
Ask Someone Out - Category 3
Meal Prep or Not - Category 2
Go Out or Stay in - Category 1
What Book to Read - Category 3
What Dish to Eat - Category 1
Eat at Home or Get Takeaway - Category 1
Where to Vacation - Category 2
What Time to Get up - Category 2
Social Plans - Category 2
Birthday Plans for Self - Category 2
Mode of Transport - Category 3
Appetizer or Dessert - Category 1
Time for the Alarm - Category 2
Breaking the twenty choices into percentages of the Categories above:
Category 1 = 25%
Category 2 = 45%
Category 3 = 30%
Using this list, we can see something extraordinary. Taking the list above as an example of the choices we might make in a day, and with the percentages of these choices, we can see how many decisions we make in which category per day, in our range of 122 choices per day to 35,000 cpd
Category 1 = 30.5 cpd – 8,750 cpd
Category 2 = 54.9 cpd – 15,750 cpd
Category 3 = 36.6 cpd – 10,500 cpd
Category 2 choices make up the bulk of our decisions per day. We try to find the “sweet spot” in our day, and that’s why. We’re trying to find the “sweet spot” throughout each choice we make.
Think about your own choices today—how many fall into each category? Reply in the comments or jot them down in your journal. We’ll use them in the next blog.
Having all this information is well and good, but how does it help people make a choice faster? How do you take the categories here and decide what is best or not? How can we be more efficient, make better choices, and make the world better as a whole just by dividing our choices into categories?
Dividing the choices into categories is just the first step in a larger world of making better choices. This is true. This is the first step into a groundbreaking field in philosophy and psychology I’m calling “Moral Mechanics.”
I’ve devised a way to not only make identifying choices easier, guiding you to make smarter choices in your everyday life, but also, through these choices, tie together a person’s spirit, mind, and body in the reaction of how choice affects each one of us.
If this interests you, then hang on, friend. This blog starts a new series explaining Moral Mechanics with the aim of making your decisions, your life, and your spirit more apt to handle these rough decisions.
With All My Heart,
Geoffrey
cps - choices per second
cpm - choices per minute
cph - choices per hour
cpd - choices per day
This is my viewpoint in making these choices. Categorical choice may vary based on your experience.