Author: Daniel J. Levitin
The title of this book is an overload in itself, but the premise is solid. We are faced with too many choices today and these choices make us less happy, not more. And the trend is getting worse. Daniel makes his point by highlighting how the average grocery store now has over 40,000 unique products as opposed to less than 10,000 in 1975. Most of our needs revolve around 150 products and so we spend a huge amount of cognitive effort ignoring the thousands of items in the grocery store.
Decisions like this are lurking at every corner of our lives. The online shopping marketplace has made it infinitely worse. I recall, going through the entire catalog (tens of thousands) of light fixtures in several online stores when I was remodeling my house a few years ago. While driving, I often feel the need to consider alternate routes and optimize for traffic. Many people I know, watch a show on TV while checking their mobile phones for updates on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc. Daniel underscores the point that all this context-switching consumes energy and prevents us from making good decisions.
The book starts out with lots of promise, but Daniel strays in his thoughts. Halfway through the book, Daniel decides to focus on Bayesian statistics and goes off into a detailed description of how to calculate the odds that your test was a false positive. He then veers off into leadership and the US Army’s Mission Command manual. While most of the information resonated well with my view of cognitive behaviors, the book meandered about and made for a rather slow read.
The title of this book is an overload in itself, but the premise is solid. We are faced with too many choices today and these choices make us less happy, not more. And the trend is getting worse. Daniel makes his point by highlighting how the average grocery store now has over 40,000 unique products as opposed to less than 10,000 in 1975. Most of our needs revolve around 150 products and so we spend a huge amount of cognitive effort ignoring the thousands of items in the grocery store.
Decisions like this are lurking at every corner of our lives. The online shopping marketplace has made it infinitely worse. I recall, going through the entire catalog (tens of thousands) of light fixtures in several online stores when I was remodeling my house a few years ago. While driving, I often feel the need to consider alternate routes and optimize for traffic. Many people I know, watch a show on TV while checking their mobile phones for updates on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc. Daniel underscores the point that all this context-switching consumes energy and prevents us from making good decisions.
The book starts out with lots of promise, but Daniel strays in his thoughts. Halfway through the book, Daniel decides to focus on Bayesian statistics and goes off into a detailed description of how to calculate the odds that your test was a false positive. He then veers off into leadership and the US Army’s Mission Command manual. While most of the information resonated well with my view of cognitive behaviors, the book meandered about and made for a rather slow read.
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