Marilyn Luis
One of our greatest rights is the freedom to choose. However, today, we are flooded by a plethora of options in every category of life. In the supermarket, we get stuck in the aisles just trying to choose a brand, for example, of ice-cream. If we go to a coffee shop, we are bombarded by a number of questions as we place our order for coffee like, “Would you like it hot or cold?, Do you want sugar or cream in it? If cold, would like your ice, crushed or cubed? What flavour do you want it? What topping would you like to go for?”
And then at the end of it you feel that your coffee is well deserved for all the taxing your brain has just undergone by those numerous questions.
Researchers show that when volunteers were presented with 10 flavours of jams to choose from, 33% actually bought jams. When this number was increased to 24 flavours, just 3% ended up buying the jams.
The problem here was having too many choices, a stimulus overflow. The permanent stress of having to make a choice, the right choice preferably, from too many options available paralyses the brain and lulls us into inaction. We tend to fall back on old behavioural patterns that might not be the right solution for our current predicament.
So, it has been found out that to remedy such a tendency of falling back on old habits when faced with many options, you must get your brain used to stress by constantly leaving your comfort zone to try new things and experience new activities. In this way, you brain wont panic in the moment of having to make a choice from among many and you will end up making a good decision.
If you still find yourself stuck in a pool of possibilities with no end in sight, you can simplify your decision making process by choosing to look at around 80% of the information available necessary to take action. Sometimes, you don’t need a 100%.
In the world of mutual fund investments, investors are confronted with a number of schemes to choose from. How do you choose the right one for achieving important goals like children’s education or retirement? The said investor then falls back on old habits, wise advice from the past, that might not be relevant anymore “ like investing in fixed deposits or endowment insurance policies (where you get something back).
The remedy to this would be to take a step back, get out of your comfort zone (fixed deposits), explore other avenues of investment, and simplify your decisions making process by limiting your choices to the top 7 chunks of information so collected. Then going with your ‘gut/instinct’, you may choose the product or schemes most suitable for you. I recommend that this be done with a Financial Planner to begin with and then once you’ve got the hang of it, your dependence on a Certified Planner can be increasingly reduced as the years roll on.
In this way, you will feel more empowered and certain when making a decision about your investments or any new opportunity that comes along.
