Most people think that sparking creativity is all about adding things[1]. They tend to think that the more they add to a particular venture or product or service, the better. More features—sure that will add to the creative element of the offering! More options? Yes, please! That will add choice, which will lead to better outcomes. We tend to associate more with being better.

But when it comes to creativity, less is more.

Psychologist Barry Schwartz’s seminal concept, The Paradox of Choice[2], introduced into the mainstream the suggestion that the more options we have, the less satisfied we feel with our decisions. This tends to occur because having too many options is tiring and leads to fatigue of choice. We need to process each choice individually, and that takes time and effort. It is a cognitive load on our brains. Finally, because of this choice overload, we pick something, and we are generally not all that happy with our choice. Regret slips in, doubt too, and soon we wonder if we made the right choice. If you doubt any of this, try spending some time searching for a product online. The plethora of options will soon tire even the bravest of souls.

Another famous study about choice overload is the “Jam Study” published by Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper[3], which uncovered fascinating results when displaying jam in a grocery store. They found that if a display case held 24 different flavors of jam (strawberry, grape, etc.), the display attracted visitors, yet only converted 3 percent of the people drawn to the display into buyers. Then, after reducing the 24 types to just 6 types of jam, they found that the display attracted fewer customers but ended up leading to a sale 30 percent of the time. Less choice is equal to more sales.

So what can we do when we are drawn to multiple choices and constantly adding things to try and get creative? Here are three things that anyone can do to improve creativity by paring down.

1. The Rule of Three

The first thing that anyone can do to become more creative and innovative is to limit choices to three things maximum. I have spent many years running advertising agencies, and I always limited the options of advertising campaigns, radio spots, TV commercials, and other decisions that my clients would have to make to three choices max. This pruning of ideas takes effort because it forces you to make judgments on what to leave in and what to leave out, which can be hard if you have a lot of different ideas. But ultimately, it leads clients to consume ideas that are easy to make. Limit choices to three, and you will inevitably embed creativity—simply by choosing what three ideas are the strongest—into any decisions you make.

1. Differentiate and Simplify

A modern grocery store in the United States has 285 different types of cookies, 120 different types of pasta sauces, 175 different types of salad dressings, and a whopping 175 types of cereal[4]! It’s no wonder that choice overload has gone too far. But sometimes choice cannot be stopped, and it must be there. So what can you do in that case? Try to differentiate as best you can. If you must offer more than three options, simplify your offering as much as you can. Make sure that the offering is easily understood and differentiated without too much cognitive load. Make sure that the offering has clear distinctions so that the choice becomes more instinctual, simple, and far less of a chore.

1. Lessen the Bureaucracy

In my latest book, *The Solution Mindset, *I highlight post-World War II Japan as a place where lessening the bureaucracy led to significant progress. At the end of World War II, the United States was tasked with repairing the war-torn country. The roads were in disarray after the numerous bombing runs, and General MacArthur was tasked with repairing them quickly. But he was met with a ton of bureaucracy and obstacles like committees, conflicting schedules, and appointed boards that made decisions slowly. So he encouraged teams to lessen the bureaucracy, and instead of a road taking a year or more to repair, he found that by lessening the bureaucracy, the same road would take half the time to repair. You can do the same by starting to look at all the bureaucracy in your life—things that are making it more complicated to get things done, and take them away. I do this with professional teams at companies across the country when I consult. Who better to recognize obstacles and bureaucracy than the actual teams working on projects? I then encourage people to make even the smallest improvements in bureaucracy, as they add up in the long run.

In our quest to be more creative, taking away choice and limiting bureaucracy can be some of the most powerful things we can do. In those cases where we cannot limit choice, differentiating the options as easily and intuitively as possible can lead to great results. The next time you have a chance to prune away ideas and focus them instead, you may discover that missing boost in your creativity.

References

[1] Misuraca R, Nixon AE, Miceli S, Di Stefano G, Scaffidi Abbate C. On the advantages and disadvantages of choice: future research directions in choice overload and its moderators. Front Psychol. 2024 May 9;15:1290359. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1290359. PMID: 38784631; PMCID: PMC11111947. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11111947/

[2] Schwartz, B. (2004). The Paradox Of Choice: Why More Is Less. Harper Perennial. https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-psychology/198/

[3] Iyengar, S. S., & Lepper, M. R. (2000). When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing? Journal of personality and social psychology, 79(6), 995. https://faculty.washington.edu/jdb/345/345%20Articles/Iyengar%20%26%20L…

[4] Botti, S., & Iyengar, S. S. (2006). The Dark Side of Choice: When Choice Impairs Social Welfare. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 25(1), 24-38. https://doi.org/10.1509/jppm.25.1.24 (Original work published 2006)