Ask HN: How do you overcome decision paralysis when shopping? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you overcome decision paralysis when shopping?

22 pointsbehnamoh29 comments

In my home country (not the US), shopping was simple: Just go to a few stores and see what's available (they often carried similar items). Then make a purchase and go home.

In the US, however, there aren't many shops where I live. Everyone I know buys things online, but there are many e-commerce websites and each has its own perks and quirks.

Let's just consider Amazon. I fully experience the paradox of choice whenever I search for something on Amazon, because there are 100s or even 1000s of options that I don't know which one to choose. I spend hours and hours trying to buy even the simplest things (e.g., a butter dish, skillet, etc.)

What are your strategies to deal with this situation? Are there better search engines than Amazon's builtin search that can help reduce the noise when shopping?

View on HN

I used to have this problem, then I realized I was over optimizing.

The eye opening experience for me happened when I needed to quickly setup a new kitchen so I went to Wal-Mart and just bought a bunch of cheap stuff as a temporary solution. I ended up being happy with 90% of what I bought and only re-bought a few things. In contrast to the meticulous research I normally do and the higher cost items I usually buy, I was quite surprised.

The realization I had is that I was making my decisions the wrong way. Previously, I had been trying to find "the best item that didn't cost too much". Whereas the criteria should really finding an item "that meets my needs". It doesn't need to be the best, just good enough.

I can now go to a store and pick up whatever random skillet they have without much thought and it works out 90% of the time. Much less stress. And when I do later realize I need something better, I have a better understanding of what I need so it makes shopping easier.

Right. Satisficing. Lovely Walmart example. Works for getting rid of stuff (decluttering) too. I've downsized my belongings 90% by weight and have only had to rebuy a couple or three things (there's almost always more than one way to do what ya wanna do.) https://practicalpie.com/satisficing/

In woodworking and other crafts this is called the "Harbor Freight rule": when you need a tool for the first time, you go buy the cheapest one from Harbor Freight. Either the tool will never break in which case you don't use it enough to justify something more expensive, or you do use it enough to break it at which point you've gained enough experience to shop around properly.

This rule sounds wasteful but in the real world of uncertainty and risk, it pays for itself almost immediately.

Decathlon is the sports equivalent

I noticed I did the same thing when looking for hotels - what's the possibly best hotel out there for some reasonable price? Ooh, they have breakfast, ooooooh, but this one has breakfast and a bar, and this one even has a spa and nice hardwood floor!

At some point I made the same switch you describe: what is my minimum requirement so that I do not regret booking the hotel (for me: breakfast, reasonably close to destination, no-smoking on premises, rating above 8), then simply book the cheapest one that fulfills this. Reduced FOMO and time spent, not looking back.

My strategy:

1) Make bigger decisions - instead of buying a skillet, design your ideal kitchen (or if that's too big, just your set of pots/pans). You will either find that the skillet doesn't make all that much of a difference and be ok with whatever because it's such a small part of the job, or you'll find that the decision is more obvious.

2) Listen to instincts. Be willing to choose based on the things you might initially dismiss as "stupid" like aesthetics and how much joy you feel using it. A skillet should feel right in your hand. If you try to flip food, the weight should feel like you can manipulate it easily. These things usually matter much more than objective quality measures. This doesn't mean dismissing red flags, just that online reviews or "expert" opinions aren't the end-all-be-all.

3) Buying in person if you can helps with 2

IMO it is often "good enough" to just buy (almost) anything (beside the cheapest) when the stakes are not high. And that will pretty much do most of the time.

For important decisions, choosing the main scale(s) (and their weight) is a good strategy. For example, for everything food, scale = "healthier" for me, So this somewhat simplifies decisions.

However, I do try to rapidly harness the "wisdom of the crowd", when possible. For Amazon, I've been using an extension [1] lately that filters results by number of reviews and rating. It is not science, but It's a fast way out.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/trusty-search-assi...

I'm in the same boat. I can spend weeks and months exploring the most mundane things I buy. One thing I have realized is that I rather enjoy the process. I like to find out more about what comprises a quality product for a given application and how the various products in the market fare. And so I have let go and let the process take its own sweet time.

Of course, every now and then you need to procure something immediately. For such situations, I have a fuck-it budget that I won't regret burning. As long as it's within that budget, I say fuck-it and grab the nearest thing I see.

> Let's just consider Amazon. I fully experience the paradox of choice whenever I search for something on Amazon, because there are 100s or even 1000s of options that I don't know which one to choose.

My experience is very different. When I search for something on amazon, I mostly find the exact same item/model repeated over and over under different brands/product names and I find myself wanting more options, but clicking the next button results in increasing numbers of completely unrelated items mixed in the same repeated results.

It's impossible to search amazon's inventory. You get whatever they push at you from the category of goods they think you want mixed in with garbage you expressed no interest in. Even if manage to find something that looks good you're still left figuring out what sellers are scammers, what reviews are fake/apply to a different item entirely. I've basically given up trying to "browse" on amazon.

It really is ridiculous, even if you're 'loyal' to a brand, even that one brand can have hundreds of variations of a single product, why??

There has to be logic behind it but I don't understand it. It does make choosing something almost impossible.

When there are too many choices, you have to accept you may not pick the optimal product, and only research enough to bring the options within your tolerance for sub-optimality.

For commodities, i.e., like bottled water, TP etc., you can just try them at random based on price (low to high) until you find one that absolutely works for you. This decision is rational since it is not a one-time purchase you have little to lose in the grand scheme of things.

If you are cost conscious, using a membership like Sams Club or Costco can help you narrow down a lot of the choices. You may still have to make some choices, but the search space is narrowed down quite a bit. You can rationalize your decision because you already paid for the membership and every choice you make to shop at the warehouse helps amortize your membership cost. (This is also true of an Amazon Prime membership).

When you have to whittle down choices using Quality and Price are good factors (assuming the products meet your other functional requirements).

For one-off purchases, really plan them out, do comparison shopping, add them to your e-commerce shopping cart and leave them for a week or two (you will get reminders from them with enticing offers asking you to come back).... You may find something better just by going through the process and delaying your decision.

And once you make a decision, don't keep revisiting it or have buyer's remorse.

> What are your strategies to deal with this situation?

"Free Returns"

I always make sure an Amazon listing had that.[0] I never abuse it, but I just started operating under SOP that trying something out at home was part of the online shopping experience. Don't like it? Return it.

[0] Only once did I have an issue with a return request, and soon as I said "It said free returns on the listing" any resistance disappeared.

This is gonna seem weird - you're forewarned - but here goes.

Kinda the equivalent of flipping a coin, but no coin (and just maybe better.)

There used to be a hippie-dippie belief that holding, say, a food in your hand and then pressing down on that arm with the other arm would tell you what was good or bad for you. If your (holding) arm was weak, bad. Strong, good.

Of course, that's nonsense, BUT it may be a possible way to try to tap into unconscious beliefs (right or wrong beliefs.) If you're ambivalent, it's a tie-breaker. I don't do it often, but it's better than just standing there cogitating.

Another heuristic - do what will most likely blow up in a visible way; whatever will be a noticable fail, so you learn.

The best solution is to try to limit your search space. Amazon is fine if you know what you want, but it's terrible for browsing. If you do browse, at least limit to sold and shipped by Amazon, although they don't do very much curation.

Better to shop at a store that won't carry 2,000 very similar products. If you're buying tools, pick a home store, and you'll have a lot less choices than amazon in whatever tool you're looking for. It's possible to make an informed choice when you've got 4 cordless drills to choose from, it's not possible when there's hundreds. Even Walmart is a better browsing experience, although you have to carefully avoid their marketplace as well.

Buying less stuff dramatically reduces the problem.

For larger purchases or specialized items I use a reputable review site (americas test kitchen, wire cutter, etc.) and sometimes cross-reference a couple sites to see if there are common recs. For smaller ones, I usually just get the one that most closely matches what I need and has overall good reviews figuring I can just return it if it doesn't work out.

i search "best $x site:reddit.com", look for the most repeated recommendation, and buy that.

if its really expensive, i wait two weeks or more before purchasing. if i remember to purchase it, then that means that I must really want it and will use it often enough to make it worthwhile.

if you're getting into the paralysis trap, you don't really know what you need, based on that, I'd say you don't need it, and shouldn't buy it

I weigh in the money I'd spend, the time it might save me, whether I want it, whether I need it, what other people say (but only in aggregate, 10k x 4.5 stars > 1k x 5 stars, I had a better formula, but I can usually "eyeball" it now)

I do

want + save time ~= need need > want need > save time save time > want

as an example, I don't need a KVM switch, but it saves me having to disconnect and reconnect cables between my work laptop and own computer, so I got one

but for something like, a shirt, I don't care, I just get any of them, lowest price that's still got a decent rating

there's a really good scene in the movie https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/12162-the-hurt-locker about this.

Haven't watched the movie. Can you talk a bit about that scene?

The character is a bomb tech in the military, spent years in high pressure situations trying to make sure a bomb doesn't go off. But then his time in the military ends and he's back in normal life at the grocery store. He's looking at the endless options for breakfast cereals. And he can't do it. He could handle bombs but not endless choice.

Someone on the Lawfare podcast quoted a judge who said that how a case is settled is very often not the most important thing. Rather, what is most often of paramount importance is just that a case is settled, so that the disputants can move on with their lives.

Whenever I find myself agonizing over marginal trade-offs, I think of this quote.

In a podcast interview the writer of the film (who was a war reporter I think) said he was writing from experience; this had actually happened to him after returning from a war. He hesitated before including this scene, thinking it might be self-indulgent and maybe not meaningful to others (but learned otherwise.) "Write what you know!"

Get a plugin like Fakespot to filter out all the fake reviews

Today it took me 2 hours in the pub to choose a dish, and then they told me it was sold out. I might have some of that decision paralysis.

I'd suggest going with your gut next time.

Think about what features you need, what are nice to have, and what don’t really matter to you.

If it does not work, why to keep at it? I suggest to go hiking until the mental clogging vanishes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com