Make your decisions nonreversible
Almost everybody would rather buy in a store that permits returns than in one that does not. What we don't realize is that the very option of being allowed to change our minds seem to increase the chances that we will change our minds. When we can change our find about decisions, we are less satisfied with them. When a decision is final, we engage in a variety of psychological processes that enhance our feelings about the choice we made relative to the alternatives. If a decision is reversible, we don't engage these processes to the same degree.
- Excerpted from Paradox of Choice, p. 228/9
I know that I've gotten some flack before for having a policy of almost never returning anything I've bought to stores. If it's defective or goes bad: throw it out. If you decide you don't like it: give it away, sell it on eBay, or throw it out. Is such a policy best described as laziness or pleasure-producing?
This same line of thinking also seems to apply fairly directly to marriage, albeit there the "return policy" is dubbed divorce.
