Difficulty of Choices

Quite often we observe a very excessive pattern that appears more common than should - obsessive, unintended, painful decision-making procedure that quite often fails to resolve in any meaningful manner and within any meaningful time. Time passes, decision is not made, this adds up stress and uncertainty. Also, sometimes when decision is made it haunts you right after with waves of doubt, cancellation intentions, stress and so on. Common story, huh?

There are perfect articles on how to overcome such things, for example on Psyche or pretty much excellent note on hbr.org.

While most of these notes are true about quite serious things, like buying a house or changing a career you can't deny for some folks these 'hard decision syndrome' goes way beyond these obviously life-changing things. It's not a big deal when you think for weeks if you need to make that career move, but that's absolutely inexcusable when it applies to some less important things in your life.

That includes buying new, even smallest stuff for your home; and in our case - furniture for your house.

We are truly overwhelmed sometimes to see how people can't decide for months what do they want and go back and forth between different models, saving and removing things from 'favorites', endlessly checking new models. There is some certain category of shoppers that don't need to buy today, obviously and like imagining things, like overall process - and we totally get it, to each it's own, it's all good once you enjoy it. Fantasies are great thing, especially when they have little connection to today's needs and reality.

There are, however, customers, that need something today, but ultimately can't decide - and this inability to make a decision and then accept it hurts them way more than they'd want. It's no fun when you have no bed to sleep on. For these folks we wanted to share quite a few things that would make their lives easier.

Inability to make a decision can take weeks or months to overcome

These things will apply mostly to furniture purchases since that is main thing we're focused on. However, these may also work on pretty much any other goods categories. Let's go!

There are no ideal things. Just accept it.

Obsessive perfectionism is a problem on its own. There are no ideal things. Something will always be off slightly. Something will be imperfect. Ultimately, that's your own choice - to worry about little imperfect things or just to take a look at it once and go on.

Also, our category of goods - furniture - is man-made product. It will always have a bolt that's unevenly tightened, piece of thread that sticks, part of stitching that's uneven. Just accept it.

Don't focus on technical side of things.

Focus on technicals is really important when you shop for tech goods like electronics, cars and so on. Even in those cases you can't get something that will win in all regards. To focus on technical specs for furniture products is just unreasonable. First and foremost, furniture should just be comfortable and serve, not to be 'jack of all trades'.

Don't try to match colors perfectly.

One of biggest sticks in a wheel is always color fantasies. What we've noticed it's mostly a thing with women, for some reason, quite rarely with men.

Yes, it's important to think about your room, walls, curtains, ceilings, rugs, carpet and other furniture color mixes. For some people, however this becomes a chore. Approximation is key here. First of all, colors will differ on monitor and actual product. Secondly, colors will differ in your room during different times of day.

Just pick up something that will be from matching color shade and forget about it. For example if you need dark brown color, just pick up something from dark brown shade and don't be obsessed on how dark it is compared to your different brown in your room. It doesn't matter.

After you notice slight difference for 1-2 times, you'll never pay any attention to that fact again. Trust us.

Stick to your decision and don't be stressed.

All our experience, preferences and tastes come from previous choices and ultimately, previous observations and usage. If you ordered something, got something and it's 90% pros and 10% cons, just 'store' those cons in your head and move on. Don't be stressed about tiny little things that you can't change. Don't be obsessed about returns, tryouts and such.

For furniture, returns can be really expensive, stressful and inconvenient. In 99% of the cases, you don't want to deal with it.

Live a happy life and enjoy!

Life is all about be stressed about as little things as possible and be as happy as possible. For most people obsessive product hunting is nothing more than stress. Most likely most of us will get stressed during our lifetimes about much more serious things, eventually.

Meanwhile it's our ultimate goal to be as happy as we can be. Obsessive, detailed product choice decisions just steal out from our overall happiness.

You can do your own conclusions here, but next time you won't be able to decide on exact dining chairs you need, just think about it - is that what you should be stressed about?...