Choice is generally regarded as a good thing but sometimes it can be overwhelming, whether that’s deciding what to watch, what to eat or what to buy. Too much choice, Dr Chatterjee believes, adds to our daily build-up of “micro stress doses”. When we reach our personal stress threshold, “that’s when things go wrong: that’s when our back goes, that’s when we fall out with our partner.”
Too much choice adds to our daily build-up of “micro stress doses”.
The key to making fewer decisions, says Chatterjee, is “choose when it matters; don’t choose when it doesn’t.” Two well-known examples of this are Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg who would often wear the same outfits every day “to save cognitive capacity for the big decisions”.
Tip 5: Think of your phone as a person and change your relationship with it
Our preoccupation with our phones is, as Dr Chatterjee puts it, “changing the fabric of our relationships” and is a hard habit to break. To be more present, he suggests treating our phones as if they are toxic people and then adopting various good practices such as not using phones at mealtimes, designating areas of the house as phone-free and turning off app notifications.
The pay-off for these kinds of actions could be huge. Chatterjee cites research shared with him by Yale psychology professor Laurie Santos which suggests staying off social media could have “a bigger effect on your happiness than earning $100,000 a year or marrying the love of your life”.
