For most of human history, information was difficult to obtain.
If you wanted advice, you might ask a friend, a neighbour, a colleague, or someone with experience.
Your options were limited.
Today, the opposite problem exists.
Information is everywhere.
Before buying a product, people can read hundreds of reviews.
Before travelling somewhere, they can watch dozens of videos.
Before making a decision, they can search articles, listen to podcasts, ask AI, browse forums, and compare countless opinions.
In theory, having more information should make decisions easier.
Yet I’m not convinced that’s always what happens.
Sometimes it seems to do the opposite.
The more information available, the harder it becomes to decide.
Take something simple.
A person wants to buy a laptop.
Twenty years ago, they might have visited a shop and chosen between a few options.
Today they can spend days comparing specifications, reading reviews, watching comparison videos, checking forums, and asking AI for recommendations.
The result?
Sometimes they end up feeling less certain than when they started.
Psychologists sometimes refer to this as “analysis paralysis.”
The point where gathering more information stops helping and starts creating hesitation.
And honestly, I think technology has made this easier to experience.
Not because technology is bad.
But because the supply of information has become almost unlimited.
AI adds another interesting layer to this.
For the first time, people can ask questions conversationally and receive instant summaries of complex topics.
That can be incredibly useful.
But it can also create the feeling that there is always one more question to ask.
One more comparison to make.
One more perspective to consider.
Eventually, every decision reaches a point where information alone isn’t enough.
Judgement takes over.
At some stage, you stop researching and start choosing.
And that’s something technology can’t completely remove.
Because even with perfect information, people still have to decide what matters most to them.
Perhaps that’s why some of the hardest decisions in life aren’t caused by a lack of information.
They’re caused by having too much of it.
And in a world where information keeps expanding, learning when to stop searching may become just as important as knowing where to search in the first place.
Curious — have you ever spent so much time researching something that it actually became harder to make a decision?
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