The unrelenting chore of having to make decisions may be one of the most imposing stressors people face. Society today is awash with material goods and service options. For whatever you want or need to acquire, there are more brands, features, or options than you can comfortably fathom. On the job, you face an endless stream of decisions regarding equipment and supplies, subscriptions, which calls to return, what to file and where, what to schedule and when, whom to call on, whom to ignore, which tasks to tackle and which to delegate, among dozens of others.

The personal side is no easier. Suppose you're trying to buy something as simple as detergent from the supermarket. The choices you face include Tide with Bleach, Surf, Wisk, Fresh Start, Oxydol, Shaklee, Bold, Era, Fab, Solo, Sears, Dynamo, Arm & Hammer -- the list goes on and on! To buy a tennis racket, you have to choose from different handles, heads, textures, and weights. What kind of bike would you like--a mountain bike, a dirt bike, a trail bike, a ten-speed, a 15-speed, or a 20-speed? Even shopping for children's toys is stressful!

You can, however, make decisions without collisions. Even if you're confronted with a bewildering number of alternatives, there's welcome news about how to choose.

The Stress of Too Many Choices

In the mid-1980s, Robin Williams starred in Moscow on the Hudson. In one scene, Williams' character is shopping in a Manhattan supermarket with a dazzling coffee display. There's freeze-dried, rich blend, and Colombian coffee, sold in cans, pouches, canisters, glass, or cartons -- with packaging in countless colors.

Williams' character has been brought up in Russia, where there were two choices: coffee or no coffee. Now, he's faced with all kinds of choices, and he has an anxiety attack. He pitches forward, faints, and knocks over the whole display.

This story gets a chuckle whenever I tell it to audiences at conventions or conferences. On a daily basis, however, you're experiencing at the least, a mild form of the same type of anxiety. The number of choices confounds your ability to choose, rather than makes it easier. Having a lot of choices is a wonderful thing--after all, people fought and died in wars to defend this right. Yet, I've turned over every stone, excluding Sharon Stone, and I haven't seen a study in the last 14 years saying that human beings function effectively when confronted with a profound number of choices.

Your ability to make choices is enhanced when you have fewer choices to make in a given period of time.

Hold the Butter

A colleague of mine went to a restaurant where he was asked if he wanted to sit by the window, the balcony, or in the back. For water, he could choose to have it with or without ice; sparkling water; or water with a lemon. He was offered a number of appetizers and entrees. A baked potato or french fries? A baked potato with chives, sour cream, butter, plain, with cheese, with broccoli...?

After a while, his enjoyment of the dinner dissipated as he became confounded with the number of choices he'd faced merely for his evening meal. When the waiter came by several more times offering more inane choices, he got angry at the waiter and challenged him to a fight, only to be asked if he'd like to fight at the table, in the lobby, or outside!

An Inability to Choose

Think about being single--or when you were single, if you aren't presently--and imagine this situation. You're 25 years old, and it's a Friday afternoon in the spring. It's a wonderful afternoon; you've just got paid; you look and smell good; you're well-dressed; and heading to the best pick-up spot in town.

Suppose you're a man and you see a few women at a table. Invariably, what are these women talking about (if they don't know you're listening)? More than likely, they're speaking of the men in town, and in unflattering terms--i.e., “The men in this town are jerks (At one large convention, on the topic of what women have to say about eligible males in town, a lady from St. Louis responded, "I can't repeat it here!").”

Suppose there's a group of guys talking--what would they be discussing? They will probably be speaking of women, and perhaps in negative terms--i.e., “The women in this town are dogs!” In a world of six billion people and climbing, what is the reality, when it comes to choosing a mate?

There are more choices today than there have ever been, but people perceive that there are less choices. When you're confronted with too many choices, it confounds your ability to choose, and you proceed as if you have no choices.

Pretend that you're on a jumbo jet from Boston to Los Angeles, which will be in the air for five or six hours. Could you meet your mate on this plane, among the 550 people on board, if you had to? When I speak to groups live, many people will confess that they could. What if you add all the flight attendants and crew? More people will confess that they could meet their mate.

So, if you could meet your mate on a jumbo jet plane, or in the next town--which might have "only 10,000" people, why do you believe that there's nobody to meet, or that there's no good movies to see or books to read? Often, the answer is not that there are too few choices, but too many choices.

May I suggest that you:

• Let go of lower-level choices as often as possible.
• Let someone else choose when the choice is of no consequence.
• Turn your attention away from the merely titillating or mildly entertaining bits of information that come your way, lest you drown in them.

Too many choices leads to the perception of a lack of choices. This perception can be highly stressful, analogous to having little control over a situation.

Beware: Deciding By Not Deciding

I was in an office sporting a big poster on the wall that read, "Not to decide is to decide." Sometimes, when you're swamped by choices, as you saw above, your decision-making capability is diminished. If you haven't made a decision, that alone is a form of decision--a choice not to take action. A strategy for proceeding by indecision only rarely offers sought after results.

Set up your desk and office to make a decision. It's important to condition your environment so that you have space in front of you. All things being equal, if you have a clear desk with one file folder in front of you, you'll have more energy and focus than you would if you had that file folder in addition to 20 other piles. Keep a clear desk if you'll be making big decisions.

Today, where you can come to work and, by 10:00 a.m., feel totally out of sorts with everything that's fallen upon you, it's easy to lose track of what merits your decision-making...

Jeff Davidson is "The Work-Life Balance Expert®," is a preeminent time management authority, has written 56 mainstream books, and is an electrifying professional speaker, nearly 800 presentations since 1985 to clients such as Kaiser Permanente, IBM, American Express, Lufthansa, Swissotel, America Online, Re/Max, USAA, Worthington Steel, and the World Bank. Jeff is Executive Director of the Breathing Space? Institute; a popular speaker; and the author of numerous books, including:

• Simpler Living (Skyhorse Publishing)
• The 60 Second Innovator (Adams Media)
• Breathing Space (MasterMedia)
• Complete Idiot's Guide to Managing Your Time (Alpha/Penguin)

Jeff has been widely quoted in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, New York Times, and USA Today. Cited by Sharing Ideas Magazine as a "Consummate Speaker," Jeff believes that career professionals today in all industries have a responsibility to achieve their own sense of work-life balance, and he supports that quest through his websites www.BreathingSpace.com and www.Work-LifeBalance.net and through 24 iPhone Apps at www.itunes.com/BreathingSpaceInstitute.