Eeny Meeny Miny Moe

Peanut butter is next on my grocery list. I cross out soup and move on to the peanut butter aisle. I stop, craning my neck to see the entire selection stretching over my head and to either side. I inspect a few labels of the peanuts at eye-level, but the the nutrition facts are pretty much identical. I step back, scan the rows one more time as if the peanut butter will jump out at me, then fall back onto the process of selecting I learned back in kindergarten. "Eeny... meeny.. miny... moe.. catch a tiger by his toe, if he hollers let him go my mom said to pick the best one and it. is. you." My fingers hover over Skippy. I toss it in my cart and continue down the aisle.

Was it the best process? No. Was it harmful to me? No. If I had spent 20 minutes trying to figure out which peanut butter is best for my needs, it would have wasted my time and I honestly didn't care that much. In the grocery store I often select whatever is at eye level, whatever brand I recognize or whatever is the cheapest.

What about in other aspects in my life? Is there too much information? When I read Morville's section on Information Overload (ironically the same title as my last blog, although I hadn't read this section yet), I smiled at the diagram that mapped out how a certain amount of information leads to optimized decisions, but anymore information would lead to a rapid decline in decision-making.

I was keenly aware of this dilemma when writing a research paper for my grad class. Our teacher told us we only needed to read 15 or so articles for our literature review, but I got so sucked into finding more information about the topic and worrying about which ones were the most important to my argument that I ended up with over SIXTY articles. Even at that point I had to stop myself from researching further. I still wonder what I would have found if I kept searching. What if reading two more articles lead me to the one that most supported my argument? What if? What if?

Information is good to some extent, but our human tendency when we receive too much information is to shut down. We decide it's not worth it and pick whatever seems most convenient at the time. How many times have we been searching for the "perfect" present for a friend/loved one, felt so overwhelmed that we ended up giving them a gift card?

With so much information spread out on the internet, it's easy to get lost. How will we know when we've found exactly what we are looking for without wasting our time? Will we get so frustrated and intimidated by the information that we make poorer decisions than we did before?