Too many options is why you're stuck
You've been meaning to pick a new email platform for three months. Or a CRM. Or a scheduling tool. Or a niche. Or which of your six business ideas to focus on. You've read the comparison articles. You've watched the YouTube reviews. You have eleven browser tabs open. And you still haven't decided.
There's a famous study that seems to explain exactly this. There's also a twist in the story that explains it even better.
The jam study
In 2000, psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper set up a tasting booth in an upscale grocery store. Some days it displayed 24 flavors of jam. Other days, just 6. The big display attracted more attention: more shoppers stopped to look. But when it came to buying, the results flipped. Around 30% of the people who stopped at the small display bought jam. At the big display, only about 3% did.
More choice drew people in. Less choice got them to act. Researchers call this choice overload, and the jam study became one of the most famous findings in psychology.
Now here's the part other productivity blogs usually leave out.
In 2010, a team led by Benjamin Scheibehenne gathered 50 experiments on choice overload and combined the results. On average, the effect of adding more options was close to zero. Some studies found overload. Some found more choice helped. Some found nothing at all. A few attempts to redo the jam study itself didn't find the effect.
So is choice overload a myth? Not quite. A later analysis in 2015, by Alexander Chernev and colleagues, looked at 99 studies and found that choice overload is real, but only under certain conditions. It tends to show up when:
The decision feels hard, like when the options are complicated or hard to compare.
You don't have clear preferences going in.
There's pressure to pick the "right" one.
The options aren't organized in a way that makes differences easy to see.
Now read that list again and think about the decisions you're stuck on.
Why business owners get stuck
Business decisions hit every single one of those conditions. The options are complicated (software with fifty features). You often don't know what you actually need yet. The stakes feel high ("What if I pick wrong and have to migrate everything?"). And the information is a mess of sales pages, affiliate reviews, and conflicting advice.
So it's not simply that you have too many options. It's that you're facing a complicated choice without clear criteria. And more research, more tabs, and more options just make that worse.
When you're stuck on a decision, the problem usually isn't a lack of information. It's a lack of criteria.
I have people ask me all the time what the best tools are for their businesses. My best advice? The one you will actually use. A to-do list written on your notes app that you open every morning is more valuable that the shiny new to-do app that everyone is raving about but you forget about after one week. However, there are parts of your business that needs something more than just your notes app.
I have a client one time that had been "researching" project management tools for four months. When I asked what she needed it to do, she couldn't say. We spent 15 minutes writing down three must-haves. Suddenly only two tools qualified. She picked one that afternoon, and it was fine. It was always going to be fine.
How to get unstuck
1. Write your criteria before you look at options. What does it absolutely have to do? List three to five must-haves. Anything that doesn't meet them is out, no matter how shiny.
2. Cut to three. Once you know your criteria, narrow the field to three finalists. Close the other tabs. Literally.
3. Set a decision deadline. "I'll decide by Friday at noon." Research can go on forever. Decisions can't.
4. Ask: Is this reversible? Most business decisions can be undone. You can switch software. You can adjust a niche. When a decision is reversible, the right move is usually to decide quickly and learn by doing.
5. Aim for "good enough." Psychologist Barry Schwartz popularized the difference between maximizers, who hunt for the absolute best option, and satisficers, who pick the first option that meets their criteria. The research he drew on suggests satisficers tend to be happier with their choices. "Good enough" isn't settling. It's a strategy.
Decide, then do
The jam study may not be the universal law it was once made out to be. But the lesson underneath it still rings true for business owners: a pile of undefined options is a great place to hide from a decision. So pick your criteria. Cut the list. Set the deadline. Choose.
You'll learn more from one real decision than from a hundred more comparison articles.
If you've got a decision that's been stuck for months, let's untangle it together. It usually takes less time than you'd think.
Sources to link: Iyengar & Lepper (2000), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · Scheibehenne, Greifeneder & Todd (2010), Journal of Consumer Research · Chernev, Böckenholt & Goodman (2015), Journal of Consumer Psychology
