Imagine waking up on a Saturday morning, gazing out the window to see the sun shining, and asking yourself, “What should I do today?” You quickly review your obligations and responsibilities and discover that there’s nothing you have to do; the day is yours. Complete freedom awaits. So you do some stock taking. Will you be facing any challenges at work next week that maybe you should get a jump on? Are there chores around the house that you’ve been putting off? Is there any shopping that has to be done? No, no, and no. No constraints. Nothing obvious that a responsible person “should” be doing. You’re free as a bird.
Now what? It looks like a beautiful day, so perhaps you should do something outside. There’s a hike you’ve been meaning to take. It would be a challenging adventure in a gorgeous setting. You feel up for it—but are you up to it? You’ve neglected your cardio for the last few weeks and the inclines may exhaust you. Besides, the day looks so promising that the trail may be crowded—and full of unleashed dogs. How about spending the day getting your garden started? On the other hand, you’ve had a tiring week. Perhaps you should just relax and enjoy yourself. Any good sports on TV? A movie to stream? But if you do something like that, you’ll hate yourself after spending a day sitting passively in front of the tube. If you’re going to relax, then at least do something worthwhile. Catch up on the news by spending the day watching cable? These are tumultuous times and you’ve been neglecting the larger world. But cable news is so damn polarized. It raises your blood pressure. And you never know who or what to believe. Okay, then: relax by reading a book? Not a mindless potboiler, but one that actually teaches you something. If you do that, you can both relax and better yourself, and end up feeling like you had a productive day. But you suspect that a day spent reading will end up as a day spent mostly napping. Then you’ll really hate yourself.
Whew! Who knew that all this freedom of choice would be this hard? You could occupy the whole day just deciding what to do. And you’ve only gotten started. (Actually, we knew it could be this hard. I wrote a whole book about it—The Paradox of Choice—more than 20 years ago, when life was simpler because there were fewer options.) Maybe it’s time to clear your head with a cup of coffee.
Now that the coffee’s brewing, you resume your reflections about how to pass the day. “Everything I’ve been thinking so far is just about me. Is that how it should be? Should this be a ‘me day’ or a ‘we day’? I haven’t talked to my daughter in a week, and right now she’s probably packing boxes to get ready to move to her new apartment, with a new roommate, next week. I bet she’s a little overwhelmed, and maybe also a little nervous about how the new roommate situation will work out. Maybe I should call her and invite myself over to help her pack, calm her down, and keep her company.” This thought makes you feel a lot better. You can fill your day doing something productive that also helps someone you love. That makes a lot of sense. But now you’ve opened a can of worms. Your mother has been down in the dumps lately. Her health has not been great, and she spends a lot of time alone. She’s never really recovered from the depression that set in when she moved to an assisted living facility. Perhaps you should take her out to lunch, go for a little stroll. That will probably cheer her up. Which of these loved ones will benefit more from your visit? Who needs you more? And which option will give you more pleasure?
Who knew that all this freedom of choice would be this hard? You could occupy the whole day just deciding what to do.
This is getting hard. Perhaps the caffeine will help. But as you sip your coffee, something else occurs to you. Why just choose between a “me day” and a “we day”? How about a “they day”? You’ve been active in a few organizations concerned with social justice. These activities are important to you, and the organizations operate on a shoestring. Perhaps you can do some useful office work for one of them. But which one? This would be a productive way to spend the day. But do you really want to be productive on this particular day? Yes, this seems like a good idea.
But just when you think you’ve resolved your dilemma, another thought occurs to you. You’ve been thinking very short term. Shouldn’t thinking about how to spend the day be embedded in a larger project—like how to conduct your life, or what kind of person to be in the world? Lord knows that the busyness of everyday life affords little opportunity to take the longer view. Today you seem to have the chance. Maybe this is the day to take stock. “How am I doing? Am I the kind of person I thought I would be? The kind of person I hoped to be? If not, what’s missing? And how can I cultivate aspects of the self I want to have but have been neglecting? If not now, when? I’m not getting any younger. Maybe it’s time to do some major reflecting on the big things. Change of career trajectory? Change in my intimate life? Why not put everything on the table?”
* * *
There is something important to notice about the “me day” versus “we day” and the “short-term” versus “long-term” perspectives. They are very different from the “Should I take a hike or work in the garden?” options. Thinking “me day” versus “we day” establishes a context within which your final decision will be made. It puts a frame around the possibilities, with some possibilities very much inside the frame and others very much outside it. If you decide to frame this Saturday as a “we day,” suddenly all kinds of options move off the table. You’re not asking, “What should I do today?” but rather “What ‘we’ thing should I do today?”
We will see that the effects of decision framing have been much examined in the science of decision-making. We will also see that for the most part, framing has been viewed as an obstacle to good decision-making. What our book argues, in contrast, is that framing is an important ingredient—perhaps the most important ingredient—in good decision-making. Some of the possibilities you are thinking about are, in effect, possibilities that try to answer the question, “How should I frame my day?” while others try to answer, “Within the frame I have chosen, what should I actually do?”
* * *
I could go on and on enumerating ways to spend a free Saturday, but I don’t want to make you impatient, silently screaming, “Just do something!” The point of this scenario is to illustrate just how complex an apparently simple, everyday decision can be. How do we actually make such everyday decisions? What do we think about? What moves do we make to turn seemingly intractable decisions into manageable ones—or the reverse? And how should we make such decisions? What does science tell us about how decisions should be made, and about how they actually are made? The scenario just described suggests that at least sometimes, making a decision can involve all of our cognitive and emotional resources—all that we know, and all that we aspire to. But we will see that the dominant approaches to decision-making aim to reduce this potential complexity to an almost algorithmic, mechanical process. Our book argues that such simplification is a serious mistake—that to understand decision-making is to understand almost everything about human thought.
There are many ways we might go about answering the question “What should I do today?” depending on our character and our inclinations at the moment. We might simply do what strikes us—whimsically and almost impulsively. We might act in accordance with our habits and community customs—traditionally. We might simply use common sense, taking account of the obvious facts of the situation and taking our initial inclinations at face value. We might try to decide systematically and scientifically, creating some sort of spreadsheet that considers the possibilities along with our assessment of the aspects that seem to matter to us. We might think about it seriously, using our reflective intelligence to consider who we are and who we want to be. We might decide socially, thinking about who we can be helpful to and what our community expects of us. We might decide hedonically, thinking about what will give us the most pleasure. We might decide instrumentally, thinking about what will serve us best in the long run. Or we might decide more or less directly on the basis of some overarching value—philosophically.
What does science tell us about how decisions should be made, and about how they actually are made?
The discussion to follow in this series will focus on two distinct approaches to making everyday decisions—intelligent reflection on the one hand, and some type of formal, mechanical decision process represented by rational choice theory on the other. We’ll get more into the shortcomings of the latter in part two; but for now, let us discuss briefly what we mean by intelligent reflection.
Intelligent reflection allows you to see multiple aspects of a decision. It allows you to compare options that seem to have little or nothing in common. It allows you to consider how a simple decision of how to spend a Saturday says something about who you are and what you value. It allows you to ponder what kind of shadow your decision about today may cast on your future. Intelligent reflection speaks not only to what you decide, but also to how you decide. We do not always have the luxury (or the burden) of intelligent reflection. Much of the time, the demands of daily life press on us, taking much of our freedom of choice away. But even when that happens, it is intelligent reflection that may enable us to decide that these demands on us come up too often, and that they lead us away from doing the things we most want to do, or the things we should want to do. It not only enables us to be who we are; it enables us to change who we are.
* * *
Let’s zoom out from how to spend a Saturday to how to spend a life. Should you try to acquire as much money as you can? Then work on Wall Street. Should you strive to have the best relationships you can with the people (family, friends, and community) in your life? Then cultivate those relationships and also develop the aspects of your character that you will need to establish and sustain those close relationships. Should you strive to experience as much pleasure as you can in life? Then choose an undemanding job, and minimize social entanglements (no spouse or kids) to pursue what you want, when you want. Should you attempt to attain the admiration of your community? Then consider politics or charity work. These life paths are not necessarily in conflict, but can easily become incompatible, so let’s assume you have to choose between them. We believe that many young people today have exactly this kind of decision to make, and many of them are tortured by it.
So how should we decide what to do with our lives? Much of the thinking (by social scientists, at least) about how we make decisions, and how we should make decisions, falls short as a way to think about decision-making in our own lives. That theory of decision-making, known as rational choice theory, offers us a formal, quantitative alternative to intelligent reflection.
In part two I will describe what rational choice theory is and how influential it has become. I will discuss how everyday decisions must be transformed, losing much of their complexity, in order for rational choice theory to be applied to them. I will illustrate some of the ways rational choice theory fails as a description of how people make decisions, and how it also fails as a prescription for how people should make decisions. And, in part three, I will offer an alternative model for decision-making—both descriptive and prescriptive—that replaces the formal, quantitative aspirations of rational choice theory with considered, thoughtful judgment.
Adapted from Choose Wisely By Barry Schwartz and Richard Schuldenfrei. Published by Yale University Press. Copyright © 2025 by Barry Schwartz and Richard Schuldenfrei. All rights reserved.
Disclosure: Barry Schwartz is a member of the Behavioral Scientist advisory board. Advisors do not play a role in the editorial decisions of the magazine.
