I was cogitating on an essay about time- and how there really is no such thing as time management- it’s all self- management. I wasn’t getting very far and was feeling sort of antsy because it was taking longer than I thought it should. And voilà… a gimme from the WSJ! Cotton Balls, Snowfall or Static? Decision Seems Make-or-Break, a story about choosing paint.
The gist is our old friend, the Paradox of Choice. No choice makes us unhappy and so does too much. Hundreds, maybe thousands of different paint shades are too many. One decorator, frustrated by her client’s indecision responds, “This is paint. This is white paint. This is not cancer.” Paint companies have taken a play from vintners- way too many descriptions that most of us don’t understand. (I recall a wine tasting where the vintner thought a participant’s description fell short. “Citrus-y” seemed accurate and adequate. It was on the right track, the vintner admitted, but “Mandarin-y” was the ticket.)
Back to the paint. How about “white” or “off-white? That used to work, but no more. One paint company has winnowed it’s off-white options down to 152 of the “most requested off-whites”. Really, 152 is an edited list? It’s not helpful; it’s paralyzing. In a nutshell, that’s the Paradox of Choice.
So about the picture, I have no idea why I starred Hardwick White. It doesn’t even look like white but maybe when it’s time to paint, I’ll try harder to remember. But if I remember the finitude of my allotted time, maybe What White is not such a good question, but I feel sure that Nutshell would be a good name for something in the brown family.