You've had a long day and decide to relax by watching a movie on your favorite streaming service.

You scroll through some options and watch a trailer.

It looks all right, but what about this one?

Another trailer and another trailer, 20 minutes later, and you still haven't picked something to watch.

Sound familiar?

This common occurrence is due to something called choice paralysis.

Choice Paralysis is when you have trouble making a decision because there's an overwhelming amount of different options to choose from.

Maybe you've experienced it while trying to order from a lengthy diner menu or picking out paint colors.

Initially, having a lot of options can seem like a good thing.

There's a lot of freedom and possibility, but once you try to make a decision, the sheer amount of choices can be exhausting.

Sometimes to the extent that you don't make a choice at all.

This paralysis is partially caused by the belief that somewhere in this abundance of options there's a right choice.

We want to find the best movie because, after all, our time is valuable.

So we think about choosing night bikes.

But there's also Basketball Dog and Danger Cliff.

But what if those aren't as good as Garden Cop, Todd Broll Mall troll, or the Egregious Pastel Lodge, and so on and so on?

And before we know it, we've used up a large chunk of the valuable time that we were worried about wasting in the first place.

Instead of falling down this rabbit hole, give this a try.

Lowering your expectations.

I know, this may seem counterintuitive, but let's break it down.

If you change your mental expectations from I need to watch the best movie to I wanna watch a movie that's good enough,

It can accomplish two things:

one,

you're putting less pressure on yourself to find that perfect choice.

And two, by setting the bar lower, you're more likely to enjoy whatever it is you do end up choosing.

On top of this, try limiting your choices.

Let's say you feel like watching something funny.

Instead of looking through every comedy available, go ahead and pick out two or three options and force yourself to choose one of those.

By giving yourself less decision space, the choice will be both less stressful and time-consuming.

So, the next time you sit down to watch something and feel Choice Paralysis taking over.

Remember that the decision itself really doesn't hold that much weight.

Pick something. The odds are it'll be good enough.

And even if it's not the absolute best, it's probably better than nothing at all.

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