I have a fear of missing out. This fear isn't about missing out on a Friday night or a weekend with friends. Rather, it's about something larger and more concerning. I have a fear of committing to any decision that could cut down my options for the future, even if making a firm choice would provide me with new, unforeseen benefits. I stagnate when faced with decisions that force me to shut doors to majors, to summer jobs, to off-terms and to Foreign Study Programs. I waver on the precipice of indecision, literally flipping coins in an effort to take myself out of the equation, to remove the choice and put the decisions in the hand of some random arbiter.
I'm not alone in my behavior. Psychological and economic studies have repeatedly shown that we are often paralyzed by indecision when faced with a large number of choices. Consumer choice research by Columbia Business School professor Sheena Iyengar shows that although we are attracted to large amounts of choices, we have a harder time making a decision when we have more options.
However, it is not just the abundance of choices or the amount of information we have about a decision that makes it hard for us to decide. Instead, we struggle to make decisions because, in choosing one option, we must relinquish others. Choice is inherently binary. Every decision is composed of both the choice we make and the opportunity cost of the choices we forgo. Innovation and leadership scholar Priya Parker notes that as a generation, "we've been taught to relentlessly maximize our options. We live in fear to make sure that we are living the best of our possible future solutions."
I see this fear in my own habit of keeping as many options open as possible. Rather than using decisions to move myself forward toward new goals, I opt for choices that have the lowest opportunity costs and potential for future regret. By focusing on the costs of forgone opportunities rather than the benefits of future opportunities that come from making and committing to a choice, I stall when faced with major decisions.
Although my knowledge of indecision is most strongly influenced by personal experience, I see this struggle manifest in the Dartmouth community around me. The number of double and modified majors continues to rise, suggesting that we are wary of committing ourselves singularly to any one field of study, and we constantly strive to display ourselves as interdisciplinary thinkers who are open to a variety of future paths. Corporate recruiting, in large part, preys on our indecision "do this for a few years and you can go anywhere" seems to be the tagline of all sorts of organizations.
Our anxiety about "maximizing our options" is exacerbated by our hyper-awareness of the choices everyone else is making. College has always been a time of critical decision-making, but no previous generation has ever made these college-age decisions with the heightened degree of awareness we have about our peers' choices. With a few quick clicks on the Internet, we can find out which friends from high school are doing well, who is headed to graduate school, who is traveling and who has returned home. For an age group already prone to indecision, the ability to see instantly the end results of other peoples' decisions the schools, countries and jobs where our peers end up obscures the complicated process that produced these final decisions.
This digital awareness of other peoples' choices amplifies the already intense experience of making decisions at Dartmouth, a place where certain jobs and majors are seen with approval and endorsement. We are surrounded, both digitally and physically, by other individuals' choices, making it challenging to disentangle our own desires and hopes from the diverse decisions of others.
To be honest, however, these outside influences on our decision-making are not unequivocally bad. If we can allow our awareness of our peers to sharpen our understanding of ourselves and our own priorities, we will be able to make more informed choices. Yet as we work to free personal priorities from peer priorities, we must be cognizant of our generational tendency to postpone decision-making and keep as many opportunities open as possible. It is only through making hard choices that we can open doors to new opportunities.
