The Paradox of Choice, a book by Barry Schwartz, has a line that best describes my plight.
When people have no choice, life is almost unbearable ....
But as the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear.
It is official now. I have quit my job again. This time for a different reason. We are moving to
Pune in August! The irony is I stayed with my first job for almost 6 years and just about 3 months in my second one! "Project Search" has to be revived again but I'm going to take it easy this time. Be clear in the head as to what I would like to do, target specific companies and then plan my move accordingly.
Clinging tenaciously to all the choices available to us contributes to bad decisions, to anxiety, stress, and dissatisfaction—even to clinical depression.
In this whole process of weighing our options and choosing the right one, letting go of one opportunity caused me a lot of sadness. This was V dropping out of IIM B's (a business school in Bangalore) PGSEM course. We were so happy when he got through and I was looking forward to him doing it. This Saturday was the first day of the course and when he didn't turn up even after paying the fees, he got a call from the course Administrator. I think that was very sweet of them.
Our culture sanctifies freedom of choice so profoundly that the benefits of infinite options seem self-evident.