I


magine you are looking for a snack to buy and you face dozens of options in your supermarket’s snack aisle. What are you going


to do? Are you going to consider each option carefully, read the ingredients list and nutrition information panel on each label, look at the price per item and per gram, and then make a rational choice based on the strengths and weaknesses of each option? No, you are not! Like all of us, you are going to take a


shortcut. Maybe you simply reach for the snack pack you bought last time without giving it any thought. Or a brand that seems familiar because you saw an ad for it recently. Or you go for the brand you consider the market leader – after all you can’t go wrong with the leading brand. Or perhaps you pick the one that’s on special or has the most appealing graphics on the pack. There are many shortcuts you can take to eliminate the need to think. If you were asked why you chose


the snack food you ended up with, you would probably come up with some sort of rational, compelling reason for your choice. We are all very good at rationalising the shortcuts we take, but the truth is that we are typically not even aware of what actually drives our choices and pushes us to take shortcuts.


Our brains are hardwired to use shortcuts. The brain accounts for 2 to 3 percent of body mass, but uses 20 percent of all energy. It follows that thinking less is a great way to save energy, and this has been hardwired into our brains.


Most of what we do is driven by our non-conscious mind, which I call the ‘doing mind’. So while we plan and make decisions with our conscious mind (or ‘thinking mind’), our doing mind drives us to act according to its own rules without our even knowing. If you have any doubt, think about


how difficult it is for anyone to follow through on their new year’s resolutions. Every year people decide to lose weight, stop smoking, spend more time with their family, work harder, or whatever it is they feel would improve their life. Yet we know that most of us are


spectacularly unsuccessful when it comes to delivering. The vast majority of people who want to lose weight never reach their goal weight and, if they do, they usually put the weight back on within a year. The reason is that they make the decision to lose weight with their thinking mind, but their actions are driven by their doing mind. And their doing mind is much faster and, therefore, stronger than their more rational thinking mind. The same happens when we shop. Your doing mind will push you so


hard to take a shortcut that you may even decide not to buy anything at all, if you are faced with so much choice that the task of selecting an option seems like just too much hard work. Imagine you visit your local


supermarket and are offered to taste a selection of six jams. You can taste these jams for free and, if you want to, you can buy any one you particularly like. The next time you do your grocery shopping you again see the tasting station, but as you get closer you count no less than 24 jams ready to be tasted. There are many exciting flavours and you have a great time tasting some of them, but, when it comes to deciding which flavour to buy, you may find it too difficult and simply walk away. This is exactly what happened


when such an experiment was carried out: a much larger number of shoppers stopped and tasted one or more of the jams when 24 different flavour options were on display. After all, it’s fun to taste so many different flavours, and how often do you get a chance like that? But when it came to actually buying, ten times as many jams were sold when there were only six to choose from rather than 24! The reason


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