toothbrush dilemma

in short: having so many options you can’t make a decision.

have you ever been faced with so many choices that your brain seized up? this happens to me when i shop for a toothbrush. the local kroger stocks over a hundred kinds of toothbrush, in varying sizes, textures, colors, and with a dizzying array of features. some of them include a pick at the end for ‘flossing’, some massage your gums. some are electronic, with a vibrating head and a timer. there are wide heads, long, short, and narrow heads, soft or stiff bristles, different grips—some with padding, some without. folding models for travel.

it’s like someone shuts my brain off. this is toothbrush dilemma.

it’s like this: what if you pick the wrong one? what if the one you pick doesn’t have the features you want? what if you don’t use the features it has? did you waste that $0.30?

there are a lot of situations wherein the toothbrush dilemma plays a factor. living in a town with every variety of food imaginable within three minutes of my house, i often have a tough time deciding where to eat. i fall back on defaults. you probably do too. you tend to go to a handful of restaurants, or a few bars. you stick to known quantities.

and this is the way out of the toothbrush dilemma generally—setting good defaults. try them all, or at least a handful, settle on a good one, and use that one every time.

there are situations where this doesn’t apply, and in that case you try to go in with an idea of what you want ahead of time, based on good intelligence. pick the first thing that meets your criteria until you find out it doesn’t. move on to the next thing.

the toothbrush dilemma applies most strongly when you are under a time pressure. you have to decide quickly, you have no real information, and you have more options than you thought possible. in this situation, i usually just pick something quickly, based on some arbitrary criteria like ‘color’. when i’m at the supermarket, i am usually short on time.

actually, i’m nearly always short on time.

the flip side of this? if you just hit your defaults all the time, you might be missing out on something worthwhile. after a certain point, most people tend to stick to the familiar, and that’s a shame. could be food, toothbrushes, parks, sports, or anything else—if you’re not exploring even a little bit, there’s probably something you’re missing. don’t do that. go out on a limb. take a break from the familiar occasionally.

so next time you’re faced with this dilemma, choose something different. but do it fast. if you have no default, ask someone who does.

happy shopping.