The Paradox: When More Choices Lead to Less Action
Those 7 different business courses aren't going to help like you think they are...
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Before you dive into this article, consider popping over and reading its precursor Entrepreneur Know Thyself for the maximum impact on your coaching business development:
Have you ever signed up for multiple online courses or webinars, only to complete none of them? Or spent hours browsing Netflix without choosing anything to watch? You're not alone—and this psychology is likely hindering your coaching practice's development.
Freedom Through Constraint
"The way to maximize freedom is to maximize choice. The more choice people have, the more freedom they have, and the more freedom they have, the more welfare they have." This compelling idea, as Barry Schwartz explains in his landmark TED Talk The Paradox of Choice, has become the cornerstone of western societies. Yet Schwartz offers a provocative counterpoint: while some choice is undoubtedly better than none, more choice is not always better than less.
We live in an age of unprecedented options. As Psychology Today notes, we make over 200 decisions related to food alone each day. The modern marketplace reflects this reality: a typical western grocery store contains 285 types of cookies, 120 different pasta sauces, and 275 varieties of cereal.
This abundance seems like progress. After all, choice has historically been associated with significant benefits. Research shows that having options improves motivation, enhances performance, and increases life satisfaction. Consider the evidence about how necessary some control over our lives is to our wellbeing: when nursing home residents were given choices about furniture arrangement and activities, they showed improved well-being and even had a 50% lower mortality rate over the following 18 months compared with residents with fewer choices.
But when it comes to information and learning—particularly in your coaching business—more isn't always better. In fact, it can be paralyzing.
The Multiple Business Course Problem
Consider this common scenario: An aspiring coach signs up for five different business-building programs/webinars. Each promises the perfect roadmap to success, but six months later, they've completed none of them or dabbled in bits and pieces of each program, but their business remains stuck in the planning phase. They often feel hopeless, frustrated, and like they’ve failed. These are not the foundational components to the mindset of a successful entrepreneur, right?
Why does this happen? The research on choice overload explains this in uncomfortable and relatable detail.
When Options Overwhelm
In what's now considered a classic study (referenced in Schwartz's talk), psychologist Sheena Iyengar set up jam-tasting booths in a supermarket. One displayed 24 varieties, while another offered just 6. While the larger display attracted more initial interest (60% versus 40% of shoppers), only 3% of those who stopped actually purchased jam. Meanwhile, 30% of those who visited the smaller display made a purchase.
This pattern repeats across countless domains. When college students were asked to write an essay from either 6 or 30 topic options, those with fewer choices were more likely to complete the assignment (74% versus 60%) and produced higher-quality work. Similarly, employee participation in 401(k) plans decreases as the number of fund options increases.
As Charles Chaffin explains in Psychology Today, "Choice overload occurs when an individual is overwhelmed by what appears to be similar options." Our cognitive resources simply can't process unlimited information effectively. Not because we’re broken, stupid, or indecisive, but because it’s simply too much!
The Satisfaction Paradox
As Schwartz points out, excessive choice produces three negative effects that aren't immediately obvious but can be felt at the core of your soul when they are pointed out to you:
1. Decision Paralysis: With too many options, people often choose to not choose, postponing decisions indefinitely or avoiding them altogether.
2. Decreased Satisfaction: Even when we do make a choice, we're less satisfied with it than we would have been with fewer options. Why? Because with many alternatives, it's easy to imagine how a different choice might have been better, leading to regret and decreased enjoyment.
3. Escalated Expectations: When options abound, our expectations rise. If there are 300 kinds of cookies, one of them must be perfect, right? With all the business programs showing up in my Facebook feed, one of them must make it simple, easy, and guaranteed successful, right? “PLEASE, let this be THE ONE!” we plead to the universe. These inflated expectations make reality disappointing, even when it's objectively good.
These effects have profound implications for how we approach decision-making in both our personal and professional lives. Let's examine how this plays out in different decision-making styles.
The Satisficer vs. Maximizer Dilemma
Schwartz distinguishes between two decision-making approaches: satisficing and maximizing.
Satisficers set an internal threshold of acceptability, and once they find an option that meets it, they choose it and move on, content with "good enough." Maximizers, by contrast, feel compelled to evaluate every possible option before deciding, seeking the absolute best outcome.
This approach has a significant downside: a 2006 study found that while maximizer students secured jobs with 20% higher starting salaries than satisficers, they also reported feeling more dissatisfied, stressed, and regretful about their choices.
According to research published in Frontiers in Psychology, maximizers process all available information and try to compare every possibility—a task that becomes cognitively impossible when choices are abundant.
More Impact: Option and Information Overload
When you sign up for multiple business courses, several additional cognitive mechanisms work against your success, beyond the expectations, paralysis, and satisfaction issues we mentioned earlier:
The Illusion of Progress: Purchasing a course delivers an immediate dopamine hit and the feeling that you're moving forward. This creates a dangerous confusion between preparation and progress.
Opportunity Costs: As Schwartz explains, "Adding options to people's lives can't help but increase the expectations people have about how good those options will be." When you have five courses, the one you're working on is constantly measured against the imagined perfection of the other four.
The Curse of Incompletion: Starting multiple learning journeys creates psychological "open loops" in your mind. These unfinished tasks drain mental energy and create background anxiety that makes focus even harder.
The Universal Challenge of Business Implementation
What most aspiring coaches don't realize is that beneath the superficial differences among business-building programs lies a universal framework. Every single business plan—whether for coaching, e-commerce, or manufacturing—ultimately revolves around two fundamental human activities: communication and connection.
Look closely at any business strategy and you'll find they all require some combination of videos, podcasts, presentations, and meetings (speaking) or blogs, content creation, articles, books, and social media posts (writing). This unavoidable overlap creates a deceptive blur between seemingly distinct approaches. The course promising "Instagram mastery" and the one offering "high-ticket closing through webinars" both ultimately require you to articulate your value and connect with an audience—just through different channels.
This similarity leads to a dangerous cognitive trap. When you encounter resistance with one approach—perhaps the discomfort of recording videos or the discipline required for consistent writing—the natural response is to abandon ship and seek another plan that feels less confronting. Yet this new approach inevitably circles back to the same fundamental skills you were avoiding in the first place.
This leads us to a critical gap in business education. What's conspicuously absent from virtually all business courses is guidance on addressing these underlying psychological dynamics that prevent implementation. They tell you what to do but rarely how to overcome the procrastination, perfectionism, or fear that blocks execution. The result is a troubling pattern: failed business after failed business, as entrepreneurs continually switch plans rather than confronting their implementation barriers. Add this layer of challenge on top of the psychological processes already at play, and you can see why you might be feeling unsatisfied, confused, or stuck.
This phenomenon isn't unique to coaching—it's the universal challenge behind business failure across all industries throughout history. The Roman merchant who couldn't commit to a trade route faces the same fundamental challenge as the modern coach who bounces between marketing strategies. Both are avoiding the uncomfortable truth that business success requires confronting and moving through resistance rather than circumventing it with yet another infallible plan.
Mitigating Information Overload
So how can we overcome these challenges? Research points to several strategies that can help you navigate information overload effectively:
Time Parameters: As Chaffin suggests, "Put some parameters around the amount of time you are willing to spend on making a decision." Decide you'll spend 30 minutes, a day or a week researching options, then commit.
Lower Expectations: As Schwartz advises, "The secret to happiness is low expectations." Rather than seeking the perfect course, look for one that's good enough to start with. Instead of expecting yourself to change overnight, work toward a 5% change and let that be enough to strive for each month.
Categorization: Simply organizing options into categories—even arbitrary ones—reduces choice overload and increases satisfaction with decisions.
Brand Association: Raffaella Misuraca’s research on consumer behavior and decision-making shows that when options are associated with recognizable brands (or trusted experts), choice overload decreases significantly. This explains why following one trusted mentor often yields better results than consuming content from dozens of sources. Yes, that means unsubscribing from all those email lists.
Practice Gratitude: Finally, Schwartz emphasizes that gratitude is the antidote to regret and disappointment. Instead of focusing on what other courses might offer, appreciate what you're learning from the one you've chosen.
The Path Forward: Focused Implementation
The most successful coaches don't master everything before starting—they master one thing at a time:
Choose a single mentor or course that's "good enough" (not perfect)
Concurrently face and address the “you” factor as it emerges throughout your business development
Follow that system exclusively until you've implemented its core elements consistently, and with some improving skill
Measure results before seeking additional information sources
Practice "just in time" learning rather than "just in case" information hoarding
As Schwartz concludes, "Learning to choose is hard. Learning to choose well is harder. And learning to choose well in a world of unlimited possibilities is harder still, perhaps too hard."
In a world designed to fragment your attention, the ability to focus on implementing a single system may be your most valuable asset. The next time you're tempted to sign up for another course while others remain incomplete, ask yourself: Do I need more information, or do I need to act on what I already know? It’s very tempting to believe you need more information – but if it feels like you need more information to make it clearer, or easier, or more guaranteed...you probably just need to address your own issues with risk, failure, perfectionism, self-confidence, or being held accountable for your choice. And that’s the fundamentally normal stuff most humans (like our clients) deal with, isn’t it?
Another business program isn’t the answer until you’ve given your current one, and yourself, a proper chance. Your coaching business doesn't need more options. It needs YOU. It needs your clear mind, decisive action, and willingness to face yourself along the way.
