So Many Choices, So Little Time

Suddenly you're possessed. It's as if aliens have immobilized you in front of all those flashing televisions and all you wanted to do was buy one.

It comes over you, that slightly seasick feeling triggered by too much technology.

You thought it was just you. You thought whenever you nose your cart through the supermarket and all those zillions of kinds of cereal cast a spell on you so you can't just pick one, you thought you were unique. Well you're not, reports CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Martha Teichner.

"People are really attracted to bountiful variety, but then when they're in that store that has a lot they suffer as they try to make decisions and they don't buy more," says psychology professor Barry Schwartz, while touring a Whole Foods supermarket.

In his book "The Paradox Of Choice," Schwartz argues that there really, truly is such a thing as too much choice.

"The notion is that freedom is liberating, choice is liberating, so we should seek and embrace as much of that as possible. The paradox is that a point can be reached where people have so much choice, so much freedom, that instead of being liberated they're paralyzed, they're paralyzed into inaction, indecision," Schwartz explains.

If you don't believe we're drowning in choice visit the testing labs at the not-for-profit Consumer Union, which publishes Consumer Reports magazine. Jeffrey Asher is the technical director.

Asher says, "We have spent a half a million dollars this last year, just this last year, in buying TVs to test.

"I would say 10 years ago we would've tested 20 TVs, so we would've been looking at something on the order of $5, 000 versus half a million."

And it's not just televisions. Consumer Reports spends more than $3 million a year buying all the stuff it tests, more than 3,000 models of the 100-plus different products that show up in the magazine.

"One of the most important products we test here are cameras, digital cameras," Asher says. "Keeping up with these we have to do them about three times a year now. We have about 65. Talk about choice. Sixty-five different cameras, but they come in different sizes, different shapes."

Asher continues, "We're being forced to test more, to report more, in order for the consumer to read our magazine and be satisfied when they actually try to buy the product."

Or not, as Schwartz indicates.

"You are much less likely to be satisfied even with good decisions and the more time you spend searching and the more alternatives you evaluate, the less satisfied you'll be with whichever alternative you choose," he says.

Schwartz says all kinds of studies prove it. He calls the kind of person who obsesses over making the perfect choice and ends up miserable a "maximizer." Marketers, he believes, are turning more and more consumers into maximizers.

"You need to put blinders on and you need to put earplugs in your ears, so that you won't be affected by all of this effort to convince you that you have yesterday's technology," Schwartz says.

Or you can join the 10 million people who listen to Kim Komando.

Her technology call-in show, which originates in Phoenix, is heard on 400 radio stations across the country. Another five million people pay for her weekly email newsletter. She gets 1,000 emails a day.

The show gets 50,000 calls an hour.

Komando describes her typical caller as, "totally baffled, totally confused, ready to throw this box of electronics out the window or into the street and hopefully have a truck run it over so they would never have to see it again because it's not easy."

Komando has learned the hard way what can happen when she recommends a product.

"We have crashed Web sites," Komando says. "All of a sudden the Web site disappears. Well, then the listener thinks that well, maybe Kim got it wrong. Maybe I wrote it down wrong. Maybe I spelled it incorrectly when really, that particular vendor just couldn't handle the traffic that generated from that particular recommendation."

She's that big which ought to say something about how Americans are coping with choice.

Being in the business of offering help is becoming a growth industry, but clever marketing doesn't hurt.

The Geek Squad was started for $200. Best Buy bought it in 2002 for $3 million.

The 12,000 geeks system-wide charge a flat fee for each of their services.

Double agent Matt Reilly's assignment in Plano, Texas is to remove spyware from Adriene Morgan's computer.

Asked if technology and choices stress her out, Morgan says, "There are days when it's quite frustrating. If you're taking on something new, whether it be decorating a new room, whether it be buying a new car, choosing a doctor, yeah it gets pretty frustrating. It sure can."

Schwartz, the psychologist, agrees. "How many doctors are there to choose from in, you know, a major metropolitan area? You want the best cardiologist, you'll have 53 heart attacks before you figure out who the best cardiologist is."

So, how do you choose, especially when life and death issues are involved. What Schwartz will tell you is pretty radical.

"The more you can go through life satisfied with good enough, the less burdened you'll be by choice," he says. "My own view is that there is no area in life, there is no decision where it makes sense to look for the best. I think good enough is always good enough."

In other words, pick the first thing that seems to work and move on.