Analysis Paralysis

I once owned a small sailboat – in addition to the pleasures of sailing, one of the delights of owning a sailboat is that you can spend hours in a chandlery looking at and spending money on some of the gizmos that make sailors drool. You wouldn’t be

lieve the stuff one just has to own!

But you justify the cost – an anchor is an anchor you argue – it will last a lifetime!

My circumstances changed and I went from water to wood – I took up woodworking. Great hobby – and the tools – wow! More gadgets than you can imagine. There’s a saying amongst woodworkers; “You just can’t own too many clamps!”

Again, you justify the cost because you know a clamp is forever. I eventually ran out of room for all the stuff I collected (bought).

I still do some woodworking and enjoy an occasional day-sail now and then, but something new occupies much of my time – TECHNOLOGY.

But unlike my previous interests, I find myself paralysed by the speed of changing technology. I still love to peruse tech stores and read tech articles, but technical innovation and  developments are happening at such an alarming speed, I find myself facing a condition I call, “digital dilemma”. You can identify this condition by the inertia that develops, by the reluctance to spend hard earned money on stuff you know is already obsolete prior to being placed on the retail shelf. For the life of you – you just can’t bring yourself to carry that shinny new megathingy to the checkout desk.

So before you know it, your old technology (when I say old, I mean anything over a year is obsolete) sits in your office doing the best it can but over-burdened under the load of more speed, more capacity, more megapixels, more everything. And the worst part is, when you take your one year old technological still shinny device into the store where you purchased it to have it serviced, they start snickering at you.  DIGITAL DELEMA!

SO, WHY AM I WRITING THIS HERE?

Well, let me segway to a post I read by David Murray who blogs over at HEAD HEART HAND. He writes about ‘choice overload’, but in a more serious context in a post entitled, “Avoid Decisions, Avoid Life”. He quotes Jon Stibel who refers to this as “analysis paralysis”.

His post is thought-provoking and well worth reading.

Related Article

• Avoid Decisions, Avoid Life (blogs.hbr.org)

Advertisements