Ninety percent of adults spend half their waking lives doing things they would rather not be doing at places they would rather not be.

I want a pair of jeans-32–28, I said. Do you want them slim fit, easy fit, relaxed fit, baggy, or extra baggy? she replied. Do you want them stonewashed, acid-washed, or distressed? Do you want them...

Following the other suggestions I've made may sometimes mean that when judged by an absolute standard, the results of decisions will be less good than they might otherwise have been-all the more...

So to make the task of lowering expectations easier: Reduce the number of options you consider. Be a satisficer rather than a maximizer. Allow for serendipity.

So, to be better prepared for, and less disappointed by adaptation: As you buy your new car, acknowledge that the thrill won't be quite the same two months after you own it. Spend less time looking...

We can mitigate regret by Adopting the standards of a satisficer rather than a maximizer. Reducing the number of options we consider before making a decision. Practicing gratitude for what is good in...

Instead you might consider adopting a simple routine: 1. Keep a notepad at your bedside. 2. Every morning, when you wake up, or every night, when you go to bed, use the notepad to list five things...

There are some strategies you can use to help you avoid the disappointment that comes from thinking about opportunity costs: Unless you're truly dissatisfied, stick with what you always buy. Don't be...

On the other hand, the more we think about opportunity costs, the less satisfaction we'll derive from whatever we choose. So we should make an effort to limit how much we think about the attractive...

it's impossible to be a maximizer about everything. The trick is to learn to embrace and appreciate satisficing, to cultivate it in more and more aspects of life, rather than merely being resigned to...

It is choosers who create new opportunities for themselves and everyone else. But when faced with overwhelming choice, we are forced to become "pickers," which is to say, relatively passive selectors...

But if you've been convinced by the arguments and the evidence in this book, you now know that choice has a downside, an awareness that should make it easier for you to adopt, and live with, a "two...

Restricting yourself in this way may seem both difficult and arbitrary, but actually, this is the kind of discipline we exercise in other aspects of life. You may have a rule of thumb never to have...

The benefits of having options are apparent with each particular decision we face, but the costs are subtle and cumulative.

I believe there are steps we can take to mitigate-even eliminate-many of these sources of distress, but they aren't easy. They require practice, discipline, and perhaps a new way of thinking. On the...

human possibility, awash in material abundance. As a society, we have achieved what our ancestors could, at most, only dream about, but it has come at a great price.

Rather it is the result of a complex interaction among many psychological processes that permeate our culture, including rising expectations, awareness of opportunity costs, aversion to trade-offs,...

hedonic lag. Lane says that there is a tendency of every culture to persist in valuing the qualities that made it distinctively great long after they have lost their hedonic yield. This, he says,...