Overthinking? The Reason You Struggle With Simple Shopping Choices and the Price You Pay For It

I drink my coffee black. My colleagues prefer it with milk. I decided to be more considerate and pick up some milk today. There I was again—standing in front of an endless wall of milk. Oat, coconut, almond, soy, cashew, whole, skimmed, semi-skimmed… twelve different types staring back at me like they needed answers.

I scanned the labels, checked the ingredients, tried to remember which one my colleagues liked and which one was just marketing. Five minutes passed. I still hadn’t moved. And in that moment, what should have been a quick, easy choice felt crushing.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. My colleague, Claire was just telling me: “I once left a full cart in the middle of a store and walked out, shaking. Nothing dramatic had happened. Just too many versions of the same product, too many numbers to calculate, too many factors to weigh. The door suddenly looked like the only safe place.”

You know this feeling. The moment when more feels like a lot less. When so much creates void after void. When having everything available somehow leaves you with nothing at all. Every small decision starts to feel heavy when your mind is already carrying too much. We call it decision fatigue. I call it the silent exhaustion of modern living.

The Weight Behind Simple Choices

“Choosing almost always involves giving up something else of value. … The overload of choice contributes to dissatisfaction.”- Barry Schwartz

New research shows 64% of shoppers feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices they face. Over half have admitted to walking away without buying anything at all—not because they couldn’t afford it, but because they couldn’t decide.

What should be a moment of agency becomes a draining exercise in self-doubt and mental overload.

We think more choice means more freedom. But often, it just means more pressure to get it right. Psychologist Barry Schwartz described this as the “paradox of choice”: the more options we have, the less satisfied we become, and the more anxious we feel about whether we’ve chosen the best one.

The Reason You Struggle

Your amygdala—that ancient alarm system in your brain—cannot distinguish between selecting the wrong investment strategy and choosing the wrong bread. Both register as threat. Both trigger cortisol. Both activate the same circuits that once saved you from predators.

Your body doesn’t know the difference between standing before a hungry lion and standing before sixty-seven varieties of olive oil.

You make complex professional judgments all day, then find yourself unable to choose a restaurant for dinner. The accumulated weight of decisions large and small depletes the same reserves.

Your brain was never designed to sift through dozens of milk brands or choose between 17 types of toothpaste. Neuroscience calls it “choice overload bias”, when too many options lead to cognitive strain and, eventually, decision paralysis. A major meta-analysis of 99 studies found that not just the number of options, but the complexity of comparing them, contributes to your exhaustion.

And it’s not just in the aisles. It’s everywhere from online shopping, scrolling menus to dating apps and streaming platforms. It adds up. The energy you spent choosing a bottle of milk? That’s energy you won’t have later for something that actually matters.

Crying Over Spilt Milk

Some retailers have noticed the fatigue setting in. A few supermarkets are now experimenting with curated selections—less variety, but more thoughtful choices. The result? People are more likely to buy something. It turns out that fewer options can actually feel like more freedom when our brains can breathe.

Online, tech platforms are trying to help with filters and personalisation. But sometimes, these tools make things even more complicated, another decision to make about how we want to decide.

How to Protect Your Energy

So what can we do in the face of all this mental noise? Here are a few things that have helped me, and might help you, too:

• Shop with a list. It sounds simple, but it gives your brain direction.
• Decide early in the day. Your willpower and clarity are highest in the morning.
• Set your own rules. For example, I only buy fresh fruit and never compare more than three items. No exceptions.
• Embrace ‘good enough.’ Perfection is the enemy of making easy choices. Choosing something that’s good enough is often better than obsessing over what might be perfect.

The truth is, your life is already full of noise, responsibility and invisible decisions you make every minute. The goal is to simplify your choices, not only when shopping. Preserve Your mental clarity so you can focus on the things that really matter.

The question isn’t just which milk or olive oil?
Think of how much of yourself are you spending on things that shouldn’t cost you this much?

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