Keeping too many doors open narrows our options.

"Closing a door on an option is experienced as a loss, and people are willing to pay a price to avoid the emotion of loss," Dr. Ariely says. In the experiment, the price was easy to measure in lost cash. In life, the costs are less obvious -- wasted time, missed opportunities. If you are afraid to drop any project at the office, you pay for it at home.

Tags for this entry:  psychology  sociology  options 

This entry was published in March 2008 by Deron Bauman.

kottke.org is a weblog about the liberal arts 2.0 edited by Jason Kottke since March 1998. You can read about me and kottke.org here. If you've got questions, concerns, or an interesting link for me, send them along. Here's the kottke.org RSS feed .

Advertise on kottke.org via The Deck.