November 6, 2025 • 22 mins
Feeling overwhelmed by decisions? You're not alone. In this episode, we welcome back Emily Papps from RemakeTheRules.com to discuss "choice inflation" - a term she's coined to describe the modern phenomenon of having exponentially more choices to make AND vastly more information to process for each decision.
Emily breaks down the "cycle of exhaustion" that traps so many of us: uncertainty leads us to create information management tools, but those tools actually create choice inflation, leading to information overload, then decision fatigue, and ultimately back to uncertainty - without resolving any of our original discomfort.
In this episode, we explore:
www.mentalwealthpod.com
DISCLAIMER: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker’s own and do not constitute legal, medical, or other forms of professional advice. The material and information presented here is for general information and entertainment purposes only. The "Mental Wealth Podcast" and "Pedal My Way" names and all forms and abbreviations are the property of its owner and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product, or service.
Emily breaks down the "cycle of exhaustion" that traps so many of us: uncertainty leads us to create information management tools, but those tools actually create choice inflation, leading to information overload, then decision fatigue, and ultimately back to uncertainty - without resolving any of our original discomfort.
In this episode, we explore:
- What choice inflation is and why it's affecting everyone from individuals to small business owners
- The gap between data quantity and decision quality
- How to think probabilistically without becoming a statistician
- Why dating apps and hiring processes make us value the wrong information
- The difference between describing a job and understanding what it takes to do it well
- Practical strategies for cutting through information overload
- How to verify if the problems you're solving are actually real problems
www.mentalwealthpod.com
DISCLAIMER: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker’s own and do not constitute legal, medical, or other forms of professional advice. The material and information presented here is for general information and entertainment purposes only. The "Mental Wealth Podcast" and "Pedal My Way" names and all forms and abbreviations are the property of its owner and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product, or service.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Mental Wealth Podcast.
We are so delighted today to welcome back Emily Paps
from remaketh rules dot com. Emily has been a guest
of ours a few times now, and today we're going
to be speaking about choice inflation. For ad free episodes
of the Mental Wealth podcasts, head to Mentalwealthpod dot Gumroad
dot com. Emily. How's things.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hi, they're doing good. Thank you for having me back.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
You're very welcome. It's great to see you. And yeah,
I just thought it gets right into it. What is
choice inflation? Let's start there. What are we talking about here?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Sure? Yeah, choice inflation is a term that I've coined
in an attempt to better explain and talk about this
feeling that I think so many people are experiencing of
having way more choices to make and also having to
process way more information for each of those choices. So
(01:00):
it is just this acceleration of choice making and information
processing that I think many of us are experiencing.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Do you think there's an example there of too many
choices giving people freedom? Or you think there's a level
of anxiety? To you, what do you think the balance
is there?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I am very optimistic about this era of disruption that
I think folks are going through, that the information landscape
that we are all attempting to navigate and make decisions
withinside of and process has a great capacity for wonderful
improvement in day to day lives and also on grander
(01:39):
scales for societies, for governments, for communities. So yes, I
absolutely believe that having more choices can be a huge benefit,
but I also acknowledge that it requires a ton of
labor to manage. So that is sort of why I
think it is important and value to sort of name
(02:01):
and identify choice inflation this experience that we are all
kind of undergoing where so much of our lives are changing.
So a lot of the old routines that maybe we
used to rely on just don't work anymore, or we
are choosing to try to grow from them a wall
from them, And yeah, it's a lot of work, right,
So I think that the benefit is there, but there's
(02:23):
also some real serious pitfalls, including having decision fatigue, having
information overload, and really being paralyzed by uncertainty.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Can you speak to some of the knock on effects
of that information overload. I assume a lot of business
owners people that are dealing with these operational decisions. I,
as someone that does not own a business of facing
information overload, I can't even imagine what it must be
like with business owners. Could you speak to some of
the challenges that people are facing in this new environment?
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah? Absolutely. I have a real special place in my
heart for small business owners because of the kind of
incredible span of responsibility that they end up taking on.
Right that they are often like a one person team,
or a small team, or in charge of a very
small team, And there is just a lot right So,
as you say, as an individual who maybe doesn't have
(03:12):
the responsibility of making every choice for a business, you
already feel overwhelmed, right, And so it definitely is I
think what I feel for most folks who carry a
cell phone around in their pocket. Right. If you live
in a society where you have a supercomputer in your pocket,
then you are almost experiencing what I call the cycle
(03:35):
of exhaustion. So it starts with uncertainty. You know where
we are, Like, I want to learn more about the world,
I want to take care of myself better. I want
to run my business better, but I don't know how.
So what we do is we create what I call
choice tech information management tools that help us decide, but
(03:56):
those choice tech tools often are not actually helping us.
They are leading to choice inflation. So now we are
kind of right, the cycle of exhaustion is happening. That
increased level of choices, the increased information processing is going
to lead to information overload because we are just really
struggling to keep up with the quantity of information and
(04:18):
choices that we have to make, and then we find
ourselves in decision fatigue, analysis paralysis, and then we're kind
of back at uncertainty again. So like we have not
resolved any of the discomfort that we're feeling from in certainty.
We have just expanded the noise that is happening in
our head and the amount of decisions that we are
(04:40):
trying to make. And it's a really, really tough cycle
to be in.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Do you think the pure quantity of data that people
are trying to process is getting us further and further
away from quality of result?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I think that there is a gap in skill set.
We humans are tool makers and great at it. We
love tools. We create tools to solve all kinds of problems.
Many of them are physical material tools, you know, to
help us grind wheat or whatever to help us make bread,
But a lot of them are social technologies tool too,
(05:14):
the advent of histories. You know that we are creating
stories to help us organize and understand about the past.
That we have created ideas about geography and nation states
to help us organize into communities. And we have also
created a social technology to manage very high levels of information.
(05:37):
And that social technology is statistics. But we cannot all
be statisticians. I do not recommend that for folks, right,
But it is this strange tension where we are encountering,
like you say, an extraordinarily high volume of information without
the skills to really be able to parse it and
(05:57):
process it on our own. And that what I do
is help people to bring in the probabilistic thinking that
statistics works with. And so folks like don't have to
become statisticians, do not have to become mathematicians, but can
sort of start thinking more probabilistically, can start thinking about
(06:17):
what is the likelihood that what I am seeing, reading, feeling,
thinking is indeed accurate? What is the likelihood that it
is going to sort of result in the outcomes that
I believe it to be. What is the likelihood that
I have enough information to make a good choice for
me in this instance, and that that is sort of
(06:38):
a way for folks to kind of meet that volume
and to meet it successfully and positively.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Is that carryover between saying a decision like a dating
app and a business decision where someone has to decide
whether they're hiring or firing someone. Is that a through
line between that process that works in both sort of
decision making models.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Absolutely, one of the early steps would just be a
consideration of is this information telling me what I think
it is based on what I know about how this
person is working with a team, what their productivity is.
Do I have the information available to me to accurately
make choices about whether or not to hire, fire, promote,
(07:24):
what have you about this person? So that sort of
foundational evaluation of the information is going to be a
huge aspect of any place, you know, same with online
dating for example, Like if somebody says that they are
ex age, then I assume that they are at this
(07:44):
stage of their life right, that they are at this
stage of their maturity, And that might not actually be
a very good surrogate kind of depending on the person,
depending on the situation, we have a pattern, but not
necessarily something that is well guaranteed. So it is doing
that sort of evaluation of the information at hand. Is
it valid, is it reliable? Right? Is it telling me
(08:07):
what I think it is telling me? And is there
an actual pattern that I can apply to multiple people,
to multiple situations that I can sort of build a
new decision making process off.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Of filtration process then right distilling it down into exactly
what you're looking for and some objective and then using
those data points to finalize that decision.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
That's interesting, Yeah, evaluating a filtration system. Am I appropriately
filtering for the outcomes that I think I'm filtering for?
Speaker 3 (08:33):
If somebody is overwhelmed with choice? I It depends on
the situation, depends on circumstances. But in general, is there
any sssizens you can share?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
For sure? You are absolutely correct that it is very
dependent on the person in their situation. But something that
I see in I think every single person that I've
talked to that can benefit them is to take a
moment and really verify that the problem that you think
(09:03):
you're solving is a problem. A lot of the tools
that are now available to us, can amplify our experience
of a problem that we have, or amplify an experience
of a problem that we don't actually have, because that
is a way to get us to use them, to connect,
to give our attention to them, to give our business
(09:23):
to them. And they've gotten quite sophisticated and good at it.
So to sort of take that moment and say, what
is the actual problem that I am trying to solve here?
And is it real? And is it as immediate as
an urgent as I am feeling it to be, because
I think in many cases people can start kind of
(09:44):
stepping back from some of these problems and stepping back
from some of that urgency, which then gives them a
little more space to evaluate better, to slow down a
little bit, or to just be like, you know what,
never mind, in the scale of problems in my life,
I'm dropping this off the list right, I'm going to
just focus on the top ten, you know, screw number
(10:05):
thirty five, and that that sort of gives them a
little extra boost, a little extra energy to refocus on
those ten.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
And in a business setting, earlier you mentioned small businesses
go through this problem as well. Were you talking about
choices they have as a business. Do they have choices
as the products they can buy, solutions they can buy,
or is it more internal managing their own process their
own employees.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Like top to bottom, and I can give an example
of each. For the external problem solving, is this idea
that there are so many solutions that are getting brought
to people and saying, oh, you know, here's a solution,
here's a solution, and then it makes the person pause
and be like, oh, do I need that solution? Do
I have that problem? Right? So that's kind of going
(10:52):
into that example of the built in urgency that is
maybe not something that we feel, but it's being put
on us. And then internally, I think one of the
biggest challenges that we're all kind of facing, including small
business owners, is that these choice tech tools are rearranging
how we encounter information, including how we communicate with each other.
(11:17):
So it is having huge changes on how information is documented,
contained shared with each other, you know, all the way
from emails to slacker teams, environments to process documentation. That
kind of like that was already incredibly challenging, and now
(11:39):
there are so many different tools and methods and potentially
different needs to do that that there's just a lot
of a lot of catch up. There a lot of
confusion and a lot of overwhelm and overload.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
When we spoke earlier in the social setting, we covered
some ideas on not doing social media and looking for dates?
How could that help if you are not doing it?
Are you at a loss? Even though it might be overwhelming?
Is more information bad in a certain sense? Or is
less information good? In general? People tend to think that
(12:16):
the more I know, the better it is, right, So,
do you have any thoughts or subtions on how they
can appost them as.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Far as a person trying to choose and decide how
they're kind of connecting with and learning about other people. Yeah,
and the huge like not just online dating, not just
in person, but the you know, quote unquote online stalking
that we can do of a person as well. Yeah, Yeah,
we can kind of take it back to an evaluation
(12:44):
of the information at hand and what it is doing
for you, you know, like, are you doing a deep
dive on this person? To which I would say is
often the case to relieve some sort of discomfort that
you feel that doesn't necessarily have to do with building
a connection or relationship. With this person and kind of
(13:08):
taking a little bit of time to say, what am
I attempting to manage with this added information? Am I
trying to control the situation by removing uncertainty? If that
is the case, Like I got bad news for you.
People very replete with uncertainty. It's not going to resolve that.
(13:34):
That being said, are there some things that are critically
important to know about another person before you make certain
commitments with them? There are? Right? Are you likely to
learn that from a LinkedIn page? I do not believe.
So how are we going to get there? What is
the actual functional avenue for acquiring that information in order
to make those critical choices for yourself that you can
(13:57):
be safe, that you can be heard right and figuring
out how to know and understand that information.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
It's interesting you say that, because from what I've heard
companies insuring candidates they go through like five six rounds
of interviews, said, I think that's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
The hiring process right now is so fascinating, Like definitely
one of the most interesting problems that I enjoy working
on because you can like it's incredibly it's a total
mess right now, right Like AI is adding this whole
level of complication from an employer standpoint that you know,
(14:36):
again it was like a system that we were already
not doing great, you know, still just barely figuring out,
working on and really hard to get our feet under
us because all these changes keep happening, and so you
can tell that there is sort of this frenzy to
correct to improve it. But how to do that right
(15:00):
is the million dollar question. And I think that it
is again managing this uncertainty right, trying to figure that out,
bringing in all these choice tech tools to try to
figure it out, and there is still that lack of
the elicitation skills right of figuring out how to actually
achieve and get the information that you need in order
(15:24):
to make that choice better, which really comes down to
the types of questions that you ask and how you
ask them. If you don't ask the right questions, it
doesn't matter how many interviews you do, You're still not
going to know.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
I think it's difficult for a lot of people to
recognize when the narrative of a choice is false. How
can people recognize the signs when they'd be given false
dichotomy between this and that and really there is no choice?
Is there signs where people can sort of go, Okay,
I'll step back from this because I already know exactly
what I want in your experience, Emily, is there science
people who look for in the idea of you're being
(15:59):
led with certain conclusion here, step back.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yes. Dating is maybe my favorite example for this sort
of false choices or these otherwise would not be empowered
pieces of information. A dating app profile often has sort
of these discrete buckets like what are you looking for?
What your level of education is right, what your height
is whatever? And it's maybe ten, it's maybe fifteen or less.
(16:29):
And because they are available to you, you are kind
of defaulting into making those things valuable. You might not
care at all about those things, but because you only
know twenty pieces of information about this person, you are
highlighting and highly valuing all twenty pieces of those information,
(16:51):
even though you might only care about one.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
This is a good point.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
This is where it's really helpful to know yourself and
to know what you want for you. Weighed deeply into
these systems because it is pretty easy to default to
what they give us, what they provide to us, because
we're so overwhelmed, because we want it to be easier,
so to kind of be able to manage that tension
(17:18):
between the collaboration and the kind of outsourcing your information
and your decision making to these tools and then taking
a step back and being like, is there real alignment here?
Is this actually what I care about and what I
am interested in? And kind of being able to switch
back and forth in between that reidentifying where I started
(17:40):
and where I want to go and the extent to
which this tool is kind of helping me get there.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
I always think about the first thing you see on
a dating profile is usually for guys, it's like height
and things like that. I always think about the pointlessness
of that kind of information because most guys are going
to say the six foot toll. Regardless of whether they're
five to eleven or five nine or five ten, every
guy is six foot online. You're not only telling people
to create this false idea themselves, but you're also giving
(18:08):
the recipient a false idea with the person they're looking
at the dating profile. The point you make about the
data as seeing is exactly right, is you're giving them
the false principle of what's important, because obviously, whether someone's
five nine or five eleven, you probably wouldn't know to
look at them anywhere, right, So I've been told a
lot of women choose guys based on heights, So it's
an interesting idea.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
This is like, you know, like there's so much going
on with that example and like the gamifying of it
to be like we all know what the patterns and
expectations are. So it's like this arms race of being like, well,
I'm going to say I'm a little taller, so I
can you know, trick someone who is already making like
incredibly arbitrary choices about partnership so that they meet me
(18:53):
and then they're going to raise the bar, you know,
And it's just kind of like, again, let's talk about
the information available to you and what you're looking for.
Every choice has a consequence, and this is how I
talk to folks, regardless if it's dating, regardless if they
are leading a huge organization, regardless of if they're a
small business owner. Your choices have consequences, and it is
(19:15):
up to you to get okay with them, like are
they acceptable to you or not? So if you want
to date someone that's seven feet tall, you are allowed
to make that choice one hundred percent. It will take
out ninety nine point five percent of the population. That
is the consequence of that choice, and the only thing
(19:35):
it will give you is someone that's seven feet tall.
So again, if that is like, what is most valuable
to you in this decision making structure, you did it,
You nailed it. But those are the consequences of it.
And that people are allowed to build those structures however
they want and however works for them.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
It's like, what's what if you shure end of a warning?
Speaker 2 (19:57):
For sure? Right, same for hire, same for making strategic
choices for an organization like you are more than allowed
to prioritize counting this one widget above everything absolutely and
counting that one widget exclusively will come with consequences. But
(20:18):
if that is the goal, that is the goal.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
What do you think about companies that are using these
AI tools now to analyze candidates before they even get
to the interview. That obviously has an impact on the
decisions that are eventually made in the person that eventually highed.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
I see a really big spectrum between organizations who have
arguably figured out what the job does, and everything is
written with that in mind. The job description says what
the job does, whatever system they are using, to filter
(20:53):
out candidates is based on the job description what the
job does, but that is not the same as what
it takes to do the job well. So I think,
like for me, that is very often the biggest discrepancy,
even before we get to conversations about whether or not
(21:15):
the tool is doing what you think it's doing. It's like, well,
you're already counting the widgets of years of experience but
not necessarily skills. So we've got to sort of reform
that whole thing before we can delegate that filtering to anything,
because we still are not even using the maybe the
(21:37):
correct language or framing to figure out how to actually
achieve the work and not just describe the work.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I love that because the idea is you're not getting
the right result if you start from a process of
filtering out people that probably would have been perfect for
the job, but you didn't get the right keyword on
the resume, or they didn't have the right seven years
versus eight years of experience particular software. That's exactly right. Well, Emily,
I really appreciate that you sort of explaining a lot
(22:08):
of these concepts of choice inflation. To me, I don't
have a great deal of experience with it, but I'm
obsessed with this kind of topic and I think it's
going to be hugely valuable to people, not only in
the long term, but in the near term too. I
think these technologies and these topics are increasing in value
and just so important to speak to someone with your
knowledge and experience and just trying to thank you for
(22:30):
your time today, and I really appreciate it. Thank you absolutely,
it's life now.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Mental Wealth Podcast.
We are so delighted today to welcome back Emily Paps
from remaketh rules dot com. Emily has been a guest
of ours a few times now, and today we're going
to be speaking about choice inflation. For ad free episodes
of the Mental Wealth podcasts, head to Mentalwealthpod dot Gumroad
dot com. Emily. How's things.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hi, they're doing good. Thank you for having me back.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
You're very welcome. It's great to see you. And yeah,
I just thought it gets right into it. What is
choice inflation? Let's start there. What are we talking about here?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Sure? Yeah, choice inflation is a term that I've coined
in an attempt to better explain and talk about this
feeling that I think so many people are experiencing of
having way more choices to make and also having to
process way more information for each of those choices. So
(01:00):
it is just this acceleration of choice making and information
processing that I think many of us are experiencing.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Do you think there's an example there of too many
choices giving people freedom? Or you think there's a level
of anxiety? To you, what do you think the balance
is there?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I am very optimistic about this era of disruption that
I think folks are going through, that the information landscape
that we are all attempting to navigate and make decisions
withinside of and process has a great capacity for wonderful
improvement in day to day lives and also on grander
(01:39):
scales for societies, for governments, for communities. So yes, I
absolutely believe that having more choices can be a huge benefit,
but I also acknowledge that it requires a ton of
labor to manage. So that is sort of why I
think it is important and value to sort of name
(02:01):
and identify choice inflation this experience that we are all
kind of undergoing where so much of our lives are changing.
So a lot of the old routines that maybe we
used to rely on just don't work anymore, or we
are choosing to try to grow from them a wall
from them, And yeah, it's a lot of work, right,
So I think that the benefit is there, but there's
(02:23):
also some real serious pitfalls, including having decision fatigue, having
information overload, and really being paralyzed by uncertainty.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Can you speak to some of the knock on effects
of that information overload. I assume a lot of business
owners people that are dealing with these operational decisions. I,
as someone that does not own a business of facing
information overload, I can't even imagine what it must be
like with business owners. Could you speak to some of
the challenges that people are facing in this new environment?
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah? Absolutely. I have a real special place in my
heart for small business owners because of the kind of
incredible span of responsibility that they end up taking on.
Right that they are often like a one person team,
or a small team, or in charge of a very
small team, And there is just a lot right So,
as you say, as an individual who maybe doesn't have
(03:12):
the responsibility of making every choice for a business, you
already feel overwhelmed, right, And so it definitely is I
think what I feel for most folks who carry a
cell phone around in their pocket. Right. If you live
in a society where you have a supercomputer in your pocket,
then you are almost experiencing what I call the cycle
(03:35):
of exhaustion. So it starts with uncertainty. You know where
we are, Like, I want to learn more about the world,
I want to take care of myself better. I want
to run my business better, but I don't know how.
So what we do is we create what I call
choice tech information management tools that help us decide, but
(03:56):
those choice tech tools often are not actually helping us.
They are leading to choice inflation. So now we are
kind of right, the cycle of exhaustion is happening. That
increased level of choices, the increased information processing is going
to lead to information overload because we are just really
struggling to keep up with the quantity of information and
(04:18):
choices that we have to make, and then we find
ourselves in decision fatigue, analysis paralysis, and then we're kind
of back at uncertainty again. So like we have not
resolved any of the discomfort that we're feeling from in certainty.
We have just expanded the noise that is happening in
our head and the amount of decisions that we are
(04:40):
trying to make. And it's a really, really tough cycle
to be in.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Do you think the pure quantity of data that people
are trying to process is getting us further and further
away from quality of result?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I think that there is a gap in skill set.
We humans are tool makers and great at it. We
love tools. We create tools to solve all kinds of problems.
Many of them are physical material tools, you know, to
help us grind wheat or whatever to help us make bread,
But a lot of them are social technologies tool too,
(05:14):
the advent of histories. You know that we are creating
stories to help us organize and understand about the past.
That we have created ideas about geography and nation states
to help us organize into communities. And we have also
created a social technology to manage very high levels of information.
(05:37):
And that social technology is statistics. But we cannot all
be statisticians. I do not recommend that for folks, right,
But it is this strange tension where we are encountering,
like you say, an extraordinarily high volume of information without
the skills to really be able to parse it and
(05:57):
process it on our own. And that what I do
is help people to bring in the probabilistic thinking that
statistics works with. And so folks like don't have to
become statisticians, do not have to become mathematicians, but can
sort of start thinking more probabilistically, can start thinking about
(06:17):
what is the likelihood that what I am seeing, reading, feeling,
thinking is indeed accurate? What is the likelihood that it
is going to sort of result in the outcomes that
I believe it to be. What is the likelihood that
I have enough information to make a good choice for
me in this instance, and that that is sort of
(06:38):
a way for folks to kind of meet that volume
and to meet it successfully and positively.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Is that carryover between saying a decision like a dating
app and a business decision where someone has to decide
whether they're hiring or firing someone. Is that a through
line between that process that works in both sort of
decision making models.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Absolutely, one of the early steps would just be a
consideration of is this information telling me what I think
it is based on what I know about how this
person is working with a team, what their productivity is.
Do I have the information available to me to accurately
make choices about whether or not to hire, fire, promote,
(07:24):
what have you about this person? So that sort of
foundational evaluation of the information is going to be a
huge aspect of any place, you know, same with online
dating for example, Like if somebody says that they are
ex age, then I assume that they are at this
(07:44):
stage of their life right, that they are at this
stage of their maturity, And that might not actually be
a very good surrogate kind of depending on the person,
depending on the situation, we have a pattern, but not
necessarily something that is well guaranteed. So it is doing
that sort of evaluation of the information at hand. Is
it valid, is it reliable? Right? Is it telling me
(08:07):
what I think it is telling me? And is there
an actual pattern that I can apply to multiple people,
to multiple situations that I can sort of build a
new decision making process off.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Of filtration process then right distilling it down into exactly
what you're looking for and some objective and then using
those data points to finalize that decision.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
That's interesting, Yeah, evaluating a filtration system. Am I appropriately
filtering for the outcomes that I think I'm filtering for?
Speaker 3 (08:33):
If somebody is overwhelmed with choice? I It depends on
the situation, depends on circumstances. But in general, is there
any sssizens you can share?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
For sure? You are absolutely correct that it is very
dependent on the person in their situation. But something that
I see in I think every single person that I've
talked to that can benefit them is to take a
moment and really verify that the problem that you think
(09:03):
you're solving is a problem. A lot of the tools
that are now available to us, can amplify our experience
of a problem that we have, or amplify an experience
of a problem that we don't actually have, because that
is a way to get us to use them, to connect,
to give our attention to them, to give our business
(09:23):
to them. And they've gotten quite sophisticated and good at it.
So to sort of take that moment and say, what
is the actual problem that I am trying to solve here?
And is it real? And is it as immediate as
an urgent as I am feeling it to be, because
I think in many cases people can start kind of
(09:44):
stepping back from some of these problems and stepping back
from some of that urgency, which then gives them a
little more space to evaluate better, to slow down a
little bit, or to just be like, you know what,
never mind, in the scale of problems in my life,
I'm dropping this off the list right, I'm going to
just focus on the top ten, you know, screw number
(10:05):
thirty five, and that that sort of gives them a
little extra boost, a little extra energy to refocus on
those ten.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
And in a business setting, earlier you mentioned small businesses
go through this problem as well. Were you talking about
choices they have as a business. Do they have choices
as the products they can buy, solutions they can buy,
or is it more internal managing their own process their
own employees.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Like top to bottom, and I can give an example
of each. For the external problem solving, is this idea
that there are so many solutions that are getting brought
to people and saying, oh, you know, here's a solution,
here's a solution, and then it makes the person pause
and be like, oh, do I need that solution? Do
I have that problem? Right? So that's kind of going
(10:52):
into that example of the built in urgency that is
maybe not something that we feel, but it's being put
on us. And then internally, I think one of the
biggest challenges that we're all kind of facing, including small
business owners, is that these choice tech tools are rearranging
how we encounter information, including how we communicate with each other.
(11:17):
So it is having huge changes on how information is documented,
contained shared with each other, you know, all the way
from emails to slacker teams, environments to process documentation. That
kind of like that was already incredibly challenging, and now
(11:39):
there are so many different tools and methods and potentially
different needs to do that that there's just a lot
of a lot of catch up. There a lot of
confusion and a lot of overwhelm and overload.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
When we spoke earlier in the social setting, we covered
some ideas on not doing social media and looking for dates?
How could that help if you are not doing it?
Are you at a loss? Even though it might be overwhelming?
Is more information bad in a certain sense? Or is
less information good? In general? People tend to think that
(12:16):
the more I know, the better it is, right, So,
do you have any thoughts or subtions on how they
can appost them as.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Far as a person trying to choose and decide how
they're kind of connecting with and learning about other people. Yeah,
and the huge like not just online dating, not just
in person, but the you know, quote unquote online stalking
that we can do of a person as well. Yeah, Yeah,
we can kind of take it back to an evaluation
(12:44):
of the information at hand and what it is doing
for you, you know, like, are you doing a deep
dive on this person? To which I would say is
often the case to relieve some sort of discomfort that
you feel that doesn't necessarily have to do with building
a connection or relationship. With this person and kind of
(13:08):
taking a little bit of time to say, what am
I attempting to manage with this added information? Am I
trying to control the situation by removing uncertainty? If that
is the case, Like I got bad news for you.
People very replete with uncertainty. It's not going to resolve that.
(13:34):
That being said, are there some things that are critically
important to know about another person before you make certain
commitments with them? There are? Right? Are you likely to
learn that from a LinkedIn page? I do not believe.
So how are we going to get there? What is
the actual functional avenue for acquiring that information in order
to make those critical choices for yourself that you can
(13:57):
be safe, that you can be heard right and figuring
out how to know and understand that information.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
It's interesting you say that, because from what I've heard
companies insuring candidates they go through like five six rounds
of interviews, said, I think that's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
The hiring process right now is so fascinating, Like definitely
one of the most interesting problems that I enjoy working
on because you can like it's incredibly it's a total
mess right now, right Like AI is adding this whole
level of complication from an employer standpoint that you know,
(14:36):
again it was like a system that we were already
not doing great, you know, still just barely figuring out,
working on and really hard to get our feet under
us because all these changes keep happening, and so you
can tell that there is sort of this frenzy to
correct to improve it. But how to do that right
(15:00):
is the million dollar question. And I think that it
is again managing this uncertainty right, trying to figure that out,
bringing in all these choice tech tools to try to
figure it out, and there is still that lack of
the elicitation skills right of figuring out how to actually
achieve and get the information that you need in order
(15:24):
to make that choice better, which really comes down to
the types of questions that you ask and how you
ask them. If you don't ask the right questions, it
doesn't matter how many interviews you do, You're still not
going to know.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
I think it's difficult for a lot of people to
recognize when the narrative of a choice is false. How
can people recognize the signs when they'd be given false
dichotomy between this and that and really there is no choice?
Is there signs where people can sort of go, Okay,
I'll step back from this because I already know exactly
what I want in your experience, Emily, is there science
people who look for in the idea of you're being
(15:59):
led with certain conclusion here, step back.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yes. Dating is maybe my favorite example for this sort
of false choices or these otherwise would not be empowered
pieces of information. A dating app profile often has sort
of these discrete buckets like what are you looking for?
What your level of education is right, what your height
is whatever? And it's maybe ten, it's maybe fifteen or less.
(16:29):
And because they are available to you, you are kind
of defaulting into making those things valuable. You might not
care at all about those things, but because you only
know twenty pieces of information about this person, you are
highlighting and highly valuing all twenty pieces of those information,
(16:51):
even though you might only care about one.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
This is a good point.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
This is where it's really helpful to know yourself and
to know what you want for you. Weighed deeply into
these systems because it is pretty easy to default to
what they give us, what they provide to us, because
we're so overwhelmed, because we want it to be easier,
so to kind of be able to manage that tension
(17:18):
between the collaboration and the kind of outsourcing your information
and your decision making to these tools and then taking
a step back and being like, is there real alignment here?
Is this actually what I care about and what I
am interested in? And kind of being able to switch
back and forth in between that reidentifying where I started
(17:40):
and where I want to go and the extent to
which this tool is kind of helping me get there.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
I always think about the first thing you see on
a dating profile is usually for guys, it's like height
and things like that. I always think about the pointlessness
of that kind of information because most guys are going
to say the six foot toll. Regardless of whether they're
five to eleven or five nine or five ten, every
guy is six foot online. You're not only telling people
to create this false idea themselves, but you're also giving
(18:08):
the recipient a false idea with the person they're looking
at the dating profile. The point you make about the
data as seeing is exactly right, is you're giving them
the false principle of what's important, because obviously, whether someone's
five nine or five eleven, you probably wouldn't know to
look at them anywhere, right, So I've been told a
lot of women choose guys based on heights, So it's
an interesting idea.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
This is like, you know, like there's so much going
on with that example and like the gamifying of it
to be like we all know what the patterns and
expectations are. So it's like this arms race of being like, well,
I'm going to say I'm a little taller, so I
can you know, trick someone who is already making like
incredibly arbitrary choices about partnership so that they meet me
(18:53):
and then they're going to raise the bar, you know,
And it's just kind of like, again, let's talk about
the information available to you and what you're looking for.
Every choice has a consequence, and this is how I
talk to folks, regardless if it's dating, regardless if they
are leading a huge organization, regardless of if they're a
small business owner. Your choices have consequences, and it is
(19:15):
up to you to get okay with them, like are
they acceptable to you or not? So if you want
to date someone that's seven feet tall, you are allowed
to make that choice one hundred percent. It will take
out ninety nine point five percent of the population. That
is the consequence of that choice, and the only thing
(19:35):
it will give you is someone that's seven feet tall.
So again, if that is like, what is most valuable
to you in this decision making structure, you did it,
You nailed it. But those are the consequences of it.
And that people are allowed to build those structures however
they want and however works for them.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
It's like, what's what if you shure end of a warning?
Speaker 2 (19:57):
For sure? Right, same for hire, same for making strategic
choices for an organization like you are more than allowed
to prioritize counting this one widget above everything absolutely and
counting that one widget exclusively will come with consequences. But
(20:18):
if that is the goal, that is the goal.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
What do you think about companies that are using these
AI tools now to analyze candidates before they even get
to the interview. That obviously has an impact on the
decisions that are eventually made in the person that eventually highed.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
I see a really big spectrum between organizations who have
arguably figured out what the job does, and everything is
written with that in mind. The job description says what
the job does, whatever system they are using, to filter
(20:53):
out candidates is based on the job description what the
job does, but that is not the same as what
it takes to do the job well. So I think,
like for me, that is very often the biggest discrepancy,
even before we get to conversations about whether or not
(21:15):
the tool is doing what you think it's doing. It's like, well,
you're already counting the widgets of years of experience but
not necessarily skills. So we've got to sort of reform
that whole thing before we can delegate that filtering to anything,
because we still are not even using the maybe the
(21:37):
correct language or framing to figure out how to actually
achieve the work and not just describe the work.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I love that because the idea is you're not getting
the right result if you start from a process of
filtering out people that probably would have been perfect for
the job, but you didn't get the right keyword on
the resume, or they didn't have the right seven years
versus eight years of experience particular software. That's exactly right. Well, Emily,
I really appreciate that you sort of explaining a lot
(22:08):
of these concepts of choice inflation. To me, I don't
have a great deal of experience with it, but I'm
obsessed with this kind of topic and I think it's
going to be hugely valuable to people, not only in
the long term, but in the near term too. I
think these technologies and these topics are increasing in value
and just so important to speak to someone with your
knowledge and experience and just trying to thank you for
(22:30):
your time today, and I really appreciate it. Thank you absolutely,
it's life now.
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