Struggling With Productivity? You Just Need to Give Yourself Fewer Options. How reducing decision options can lead to more efficient scheduling and enhanced performance.

It was time to plan our family vacation.

My wife had already chosen the destination. We'd bought our plane tickets, and our kids were thrilled. All that remained was booking a hotel and packing bags. I was tasked with the former, so I carved out an hour at the end of the day.

Related: I Made My Company 100% Virtual And It's a Decision I Regret Everyday — Here's Why.

The search began with a pretty solid idea of what we were looking for (ocean views, comfortable beds, a good breakfast and not too pricey), but once I started scrolling through the booking site, options seemed to multiply exponentially. Did we want contemporary and cool or traditional and homey? Did we want a gym? Onsite restaurants? A daily kids' program? A pool?

Suddenly, I found myself an hour and a half down the rabbit hole and no closer to a reservation. And when I finally bit the bullet, it was hard not to wonder: was there a better but missed option?

You might be familiar with this syndrome, aka "paradox of choice," in which having too many options effectively paralyzes decision-making. This can happen in weighing matters both large and small, from the right type of peanut butter to which designer is best suited to handle a critical product launch.

Related: Why You Should Limit Your Number of Daily Decisions

This paradox doesn't just halt progress; there's also an emotional toll. It can leave us stressed out in the process of doing things we'd usually enjoy — like booking a hotel for a much-needed vacation or working on a project that genuinely inspires. Afterward, it can leave us doubting a decision. You know what they say: the grass is always greener, and when there are 3,000 shades of green, the grass we chose can start to appear brown.

When it comes to work, having too many options can be kryptonite to productivity. Last year, as I started writing Automate Your Busywork: Do Less, Achieve More, and Save Your Brain for the Big Stuff (Wiley, 2023), I recognized that it represented an important but additional project in an already busy schedule as CEO of Jotform. It was incumbent upon me, then, to be razor-sharp about economizing daily choices. With that in mind, here are some strategies I practiced to navigate and overcome my paradox of choice.

Related: 9 Ways to Combat Decision Fatigue

Embrace good enough

For some, food shopping is a joy. For others, it's a dreaded task, especially at many of today's supermarkets, in which options are seemingly endless.

Writing for The Atlantic, Adam Fleming Petty described a moment of being unable to commit to, of all things, a particular orange juice.

"I froze in the aisle of a big-box store," he details in a June 2023 article. "So many different brands lay before me: Minute Maid, Simply, Tropicana, Dole, Florida's Natural, Sunny D — not to mention the niche organic labels. And each brand offered juices with various configurations of pulp, vitamins and concentrate. The sheer plenitude induced a kind of paralysis: Overwhelmed by the choices on offer, I simply could not make one."

That's why Petty ultimately advocates for shopping at reduced- or single-option stores like Trader Joe's or Aldi, where what's on offer are mainly in-house brands and where options are fewer. While there is a trade-off in the form of perhaps not getting precisely what you're after, he argues that it's worth it for the saved stress and ability to deftly make decisions.

This strategy aligns with the decision-making approach proposed by American scientist and Nobel laureate Herbert Simon, one he terms "satisficing." It means striving for adequate rather than perfect results and, in doing so, saving on costs and effort, not to mention mental anguish.

Let's say you're creating a newsletter and fretting over which template to go with. If you feel that inner perfectionist emerging while weighing options, try to picture whether perfect is necessary (or if it even exists) and if "good enough" will do.

Related: 3 Ways Perfectionism Kills Your Business (and How To Overcome It)

Consider your favorites

There are times when it does make sense to use satisficing as a streamlined solution, but that isn't always the case. At Jotform, for example, hiring is one of my top priorities, and when it comes to that, satisficing just doesn't cut it. And I'm not alone in feeling that way. In a recent episode of the podcast SmartLess, Mark Cuban related that one of his biggest learned lessons was to hire slowly. In the beginning, Cuban said, he hired fast — figured that even if someone wasn't the perfect candidate, he could somehow make it work. But that wound up costing money. The takeaway — for him and me — is that it's worth the extra effort to find the perfect person up front or as close to perfect as possible.

In cases where good enough doesn't cut it, take a moment to reflect on your favorites. Writing for Print, Tom Guarriello — a psychologist, consultant, and founding faculty member of the Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts — explains that in the context of decision-making, embracing known preferred qualities (whether in a peanut butter brand, chosen method of commute or favorite café for a morning cup of joe) is a way to avoid having to make new decisions every single day. Guarriello further notes that understanding the rules that govern these choices can help uncover how your decision-making processes work.

But back to hiring: It's always helpful, for example, to consider which employees have worked out best in the past. What factors influenced the decision to take each one on board? Which factors held the most weight in the end? Which ones turned out to be unimportant?

Analyzing the rules that govern past choices can also help overcome option paralysis — to produce not just a good decision but one that's truly in tune with your psyche.

Related: Keep Moving or Die: 3 Tips to Prevent Analysis Paralysis

Minimize the volume of choices

Barry Schwartz, who authored The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (Harper Collins, 2009), explains that cutting choices down to a few options can help save time, of course, but also help us appreciate choices better and, perhaps most importantly, enhance peace of mind (no ruminating on whether we chose the best template for that newsletter).

This concept explains, at least in part, the reasoning behind British multinational groceries and merchandise retailer Tesco, slashing 30,000 of its 90,000 product offerings in 2016. One of the motivating factors was helping customers enjoy shopping more and making them more satisfied with their choices.

On a more micro level, I am always on a mission to slash the number of decisions made throughout a workday. It's a process examined at length in my book mentioned above, one that requires identifying and mapping out workflows — the series of interconnected steps that produce any given result, then sticking to them. That way, when it's time to act, you're not storm-tossed about whether to do something or wondering what to do next. The plan kicks in, and you simply execute. Emotions, motivational questions and other human foibles aren't part of the equation anymore.

Mapping out such workflows also enables you to identify tasks that can be automated. For example, let's say you're establishing a hiring process. Screening candidates can be a tedious and time-consuming task, especially when half will likely be obvious mismatches for a given role. You might consider, then, automating that leg of the journey with a tool like Ceridian to rank and grade candidates — pre-qualifying those who are a good fit. Then, you can move forward with interviewing and hiring more expediently and with more mental energy.

Related: 3 Mundane Tasks You Should Automate to Save Your Brain for the Big Stuff