Buyer Beware!

I just want to make a purchase! I am not a person that lacks focus. I don’t mind shopping. So why do I feel like even the simplest purchases involve fifteen steps? Even in this day and age of instant gratification and Amazon Prime (read: life source) I still feel like it takes forever to buy the littlest thing.

Too Much Information

I think that our access to all of that information is an amazing thing. If you want to research: vacation destinations, buying a home, how to write a business plan; you can truly educate yourself without leaving your home. But, what if I just want to buy a new suitcase? I’m immediately presented with 16 different retailers offering 43 different brands in 12 different sizes. Now, I’ve clicked down a rabbit hole that’s left me more confused about hard sided vs. soft-sided, unsure about how many pockets I need, but thoroughly enjoying the pictures that one of the reviewers posted of himself with his suitcase on his latest river cruise. WAIT! What happened?!

Now it’s been twenty-five minutes. I have no suitcase. I don’t know which one I want because, honestly, they all look the same and are the same price. I close the tab in frustration, loosing a piece of my life I’ll never get back. I just wanted to close the circle–need suitcase, buy suitcase, have suitcase. Maybe I sound like a caveman, but, I bet the caveman ended up with his suitcase. You get my metaphor!

Sometimes, I feel like this age of information is leaving us all with a little bit of analysis paralysis. There are so many options and so many choices. We almost fear making a decision because there is always something better out there–if we just search long and hard enough for it. But, that leads to this constant feeling of self-doubt. If I just look a little harder, wait a little longer, I’ll find the perfect solution. I think we’re overthinking it.

Sometimes Good Is Good Enough

If you enjoy this hunt for the ideal item/best deal, go with God! I’d suggest you figure out a way to monetize it and market it for the rest of us who just need a new suitcase/dog bed/blender. Help the sisters out who just want to choose between product A or product B and get on with living. I just want a suitcase that hold things and doesn’t break. I’ll take any dog bed that smells better than the one we currently have. My hopes for a new blender is that it blends things. I don’t feel like it’s a lot to ask. I don’t need to read 16-page descriptions of how these items operate and what Betty in Topeka thinks of them.

Look, if it’s a big ticket item or something you have no knowledge of– I get it. It is important to be an informed consumer. But, I feel we’re all wasting our lives away twenty minutes at a time researching options for the best dry erase board. Let’s break the cycle! Let’s purchase the first item that meets our criteria and budget and be done. We’ll never look back, we’ll have what we need and go on to live our best life.

Yesterday, I walked into a store (gasp) and purchased two suitcases that looked like they may possibly fit the things I intend to put in them. I wheeled those bad boys out, put them in my car and I am never going to think about suitcases again until one of these breaks. Yesterday I was a success; I was a winner. It felt amazing.

It can be done friends! We can release ourselves from the expectations that we must read every review, search every price match. We can buy things, cross them off our list and move on. We can stop constantly second guessing ourselves on the littlest things, because that mindset works its nasty little way

into the rest of our thoughts and it doesn’t belong there. You know who you are, you know what you want, now go buy it!