Notes

This book gives general information. It isn't medical, legal or financial advice, and it can't weigh your particular decision. Where a choice needs a professional's input, get it.

I've kept sources out of the chapters where I could so they read easily. Here they are by chapter, with the limits I'm aware of. Unless I say otherwise, I read the published summary of each paper and not the full text. I checked each paper for a retraction or correction notice in September 2026 and found none. Where a chapter isn't listed, it rests on my own reasoning. That includes chapters 1, 9 apart from one reference, 10, 12, 14, 16 and 19. The person with the spreadsheet is invented, and so are the course, the fees, the salaries, the scores and the sofa.

Before you start. "Finding it difficult to make decisions" is quoted from the NHS page on the symptoms of depression in adults, which also advises seeing a GP if symptoms last most of the day, every day, for more than two weeks. The National Domestic Abuse Helpline number is from the NHS page "Getting help for domestic violence and abuse".

Chapter 2. Gilovich and Medvec, "The experience of regret: what, when, and why", Psychological Review 102, 1995, pages 379 to 395. Anderson, "The psychology of doing nothing: forms of decision avoidance result from reason and emotion", Psychological Bulletin 129, 2003, pages 139 to 167. The four habits are his terms in plainer words. He calls them choice deferral, status quo bias, omission bias and inaction inertia. The list of four needs is mine.

Chapter 3. Samuelson and Zeckhauser, "Status quo bias in decision making", Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 1, 1988, pages 7 to 59. I've taken only the term and its meaning from this paper, and I haven't read it in full. The point about harms from not acting is from Anderson's review. That the default escapes examination is my own argument.

Chapter 4. Bastardi and Shafir, "On the pursuit and misuse of useless information", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75, 1998, pages 19 to 32. The test of asking what you'd do with each possible answer follows from their definition. The wording of it is mine, and so is the distinction between facts that exist and facts that don't yet.

Chapter 5. Tversky and Shafir, "Choice under conflict: the dynamics of deferred decision", Psychological Science 3, 1992, pages 358 to 361. Redelmeier and Shafir, "Medical decision making in situations that offer multiple alternatives", JAMA 273, 1995, pages 302 to 305. The survey also went to neurologists, neurosurgeons and legislators, with similar results. The figures I quote are for the 287 family doctors. Iyengar and Lepper, "When choice is demotivating: can one desire too much of a good thing?", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79, 2000, pages 995 to 1006. Scheibehenne, Greifeneder and Todd, "Can there ever be too many options? A meta-analytic review of choice overload", Journal of Consumer Research 37, 2010, pages 409 to 425. They pooled 63 conditions from 50 experiments with 5,036 participants. Chernev, Böckenholt and Goodman, "Choice overload: a conceptual review and meta-analysis", Journal of Consumer Psychology 25, 2015, pages 333 to 358. Their fourth condition, which I left out, concerns whether the person wants to keep effort to a minimum. The cap of three options is my suggestion and hasn't been tested.

Chapter 6. Schwartz, Ward, Monterosso, Lyubomirsky, White and Lehman, "Maximizing versus satisficing: happiness is a matter of choice", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83, 2002, pages 1178 to 1197. I've kept the American spelling of "maximizers" because it's their coined label. Iyengar, Wells and Schwartz, "Doing better but feeling worse", Psychological Science 17, 2006, pages 143 to 150. The argument that close options make for hard but low-stakes choices is an old one in writing about decisions, and I haven't traced who first made it.

Chapter 7. Gilbert, Pinel, Wilson, Blumberg and Wheatley, "Immune neglect: a source of durability bias in affective forecasting", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75, 1998, pages 617 to 638. There were six studies. The events included the end of a romantic relationship, failing to get tenure, negative feedback about personality and rejection by an employer. Gilovich and Medvec as above. The repeat is Yeung and Feldman, "Revisiting the temporal pattern of regret in action versus inaction", Collabra: Psychology 8, 2022, with 988 participants recruited online in the United States. How I put the two findings together is my interpretation.

Chapter 8. Shin and Ariely, "Keeping doors open: the effect of unavailability on incentives to keep options viable", Management Science 50, 2004, pages 575 to 586. One of the authors has had other papers retracted. I found no notice against this one when I checked, and I've described only what its summary states. Gilbert and Ebert, "Decisions and revisions: the affective forecasting of changeable outcomes", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 82, 2002, pages 503 to 514. Your rights to return goods depend on how and where you bought them, so check before relying on them.

Chapter 9. Gilbert and Ebert as above. Applying their finding to decisions about work and study is my extension, and they tested nothing of that size.

Chapter 11. Kray and Gonzalez, "Differential weighting in choice versus advice: I'll do this, you do that", Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 12, 1999, pages 207 to 218. There were three studies, with 138, 62 and 170 participants. In the first, the clearest difference was between people choosing for themselves and people advising an acquaintance. Writing your decision out as a friend's is my suggestion. Similar exercises are common and I haven't sourced this one.

Chapter 13. Inaction inertia is described in Anderson's review. The eighty hours is arithmetic on invented figures.

Chapter 15. Levitt, "Heads or tails: the impact of a coin toss on major life decisions and subsequent happiness", Review of Economic Studies 88, 2021, pages 378 to 405. Participants volunteered, and the happiness measures were their own reports. Using a coin to find out what you want is an old piece of advice, and it isn't what Levitt tested. His participants were asked to follow the coin.

Chapter 17. Gollwitzer and Sheeran, "Implementation intentions and goal achievement: a meta-analysis of effects and processes", Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 38, 2006, pages 69 to 119. The rule and its five parts haven't been tested together, and what I say to expect is my expectation and not a finding.

Chapter 18. Self-referral to NHS talking therapies in England is described on the NHS website. Arrangements differ in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. That Citizens Advice is free is general knowledge.