Overthinking Granola

I have the same thing for breakfast almost every day.  Non-fat Greek yogurt, and granola.   I usually have 3 or 4 varieties of granola that I rotate.  Right now, I have Bear Naked Fit Vanilla Almond, Nature Valley Protein Oats and Dark Chocolate, Kind Peanut Butter Clusters, and Quaker Real Medleys Dark Chocolate, Cranberry and Almond Granola. I also add flavoring to my yogurt, either extract or PB2 (powdered peanut butter).

So this morning as I was preparing my breakfast, I started to think about the optimal order of rotation for my granola. You see, two varieties have almond, two have chocolate, and if I put PB2 in the yogurt, I have two peanut butter days.  So is it best to go almond, almond (and one of those almond is also chocolate), chocolate, peanut butter, or is it best to go chocolate almond, almond, chocolate, peanut butter?  Or peanut, almond, almond, no nut?

SCREECH!

What the heck is happening?  I'm overthinking granola! Just make a bowl of breakfast and get on with the day!  Now those of you who read my blog regularly know I am a big fan of planning.  Of creating an illusion of control by making active decisions, rather than letting life happen around me.  The danger of this is what happened to me this morning, analysis paralysis.

Analysis paralysis is the phenomenon whereby the availability of multiple courses of action causes a person to analyze each option so thoroughly that they are unable to choose one, and stay paralyzed in the analysis.

I recently read an article that hypothesized that many people end up not doing things they want to do because they are paralyzed trying to decide which choice to make.  There are some choices that are big enough to deserve long and hard consideration.  Things like buying a house or car, getting married, getting divorced, having children, changing careers.  But granola?

Fortunately, I was able to snap out of it before I tried to build a matrix to help me decide.  But when you get into the habit of analyzing your choices and decisions before making them, how do you prevent overthinking everything?

This kind of relates to a previous post on Opportunity Cost.  Everything has an opportunity cost.  If I eat the Oats and Dark Chocolate granola, I miss the opportunity to eat the Vanilla Almond granola.  Today.  Or for breakfast.  I could go totally rogue and have yogurt and granola again for lunch or dinner.  Wow - what a tiny opportunity cost.

But buying the wrong house or car?  Higher opportunity cost.  Marrying the wrong person?  Huge opportunity cost.   And because I am so very addicted to the illusion of control, I will continue to analyze my decisions, but to prevent analysis paralysis, I will consider the opportunity cost involved.

Let's follow the house or car purchase decision.  If the housing market is hot, and I don't mind moving, that lowers the opportunity cost.  With the car, if I more money than I need, the immediate depreciation on a new car may not be daunting, and the purchase of a classic car is a pretty safe investment anyway.

As to how to spend my time, how many things actually disappear never to happen again if we do something else?

The bottom line is only you can know the opportunity cost of your decisions for you.   Think about how much analysis the opportunity cost of the decision deserves.  Set a time boundary on yourself if the opportunity will disappear if you take too long to decide.  Then, once you make a decision, with full acceptance of the opportunity cost, move on.

The opportunity cost of analysis paralysis is that you spend your time thinking about life instead of living it.  And that is simply too expensive.