Blue Cat went to the dentist today. (Yes – he has teeth. He just doesn’t like to show them in public.) At the end of the visit, his dentist gave him some options for how to keep his teeth clean. Too many options…
Studies show that decision making is slowed down when there are too many options, and that we don’t always make the best decision if there are a lot of good things to choose from. Blue Cat has this problem – will he use floss, or soft-picks, or go-betweens, or the brush? And what’s that lip balm for – he doesn’t even have lips! He’s in quite a quandary.
He really wants to keep his teeth clean, so he made a plan to make a good decision. What he did was to first limit his options to those that would work – get rid of the lip balm, and forego the toothbrush that’s waaaay to big for his mouth. He then comparde the remaining options two at a time (a “pairwise comparison), so each decision was simpler.
Blue Cat decided on the soft-picks – they fit his mouth and are the best to get at those hard-to-reach cake crumbs. But he’s keeping the brush in case he’s ever attacked by a set of wind-up chattering teeth.
© William P. Doyle, Jr 2012
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