Testimonials | Shoham Eliav (29)

exhaustion;
internal discomfort;
ping-ponging;
lack of confidence

I was so sure of what I wanted the final student project of my degree to be, having started to think and plan it from pretty early on somewhere way back in 2nd year. But then 4th year comes around and now its time to really start working and deciding on a project, and all the confidence I previously had with my original decision disappeared and I felt overwhelmed from thinking about all the choices I had to make and all the available options I now had to choose from. Honestly, it felt that too much was open and I got lost in it all. I felt as if I was banging my head on the wall, trying to find the best choice for myself, for my idea, for my expectations. Questions start to pop up here and there: “should it be hand-drawn, should it be a movie or a game or concept art, maybe if it’s concept art, should I use a technique I know well or try something new?" and so on. I basically questioned every choice I made, important or not, and when I had finally decided on something, maybe a day goes by and I find myself bouncing back on it and changing my mind at least several times. I really think that I was in a state of intense decision-making stress for probably 2 months, where I moved around my house non-stop just trying “to find the right decisions” as if they’re hiding and waiting to be found, like a game of hide-&-seek. I think what’s really hard for me is that these options aren’t bad options, like there isn’t necessarily an easy way to differentiate between the “good” and the “bad” and so they’re all equally good; my problem is I want to feel confident that I chose the very best and the most right choice for myself, and not just one that is. "good".

Shoham•Eliav (29)

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Designed & built by: Zohar Pomerantz |  Special thanks to: Assaf Dov Cohen and Polar Team

The belief that more choice, and so more freedom, is a good thing is actually incorrect —

Choice is a real struggle when there's so much of it. The more options to choose from simply leaves us feeling overwhelmed, while having direct consequences on our mental wellbeing. This can lead to an increase in anxiety and depression, in decreased satisfaction, and regret over the choices we have already made. This issue is most commonly known as choice overload or “The Burden of Choice.”

The Project:

This project was born from personal experience, of wanting to learn more about my own decision anxiety and the reasons for why I suffer from it. Off the start, while researching the subject, I began to realize just how many other people are influenced by this same anxiety, yet feel alone in it, unaware of the existence of 'choice overload.' More so than that, while educating myself on the subject I began to feel disorientated - all the information available was scattered among different platforms, hidden in tiresome textual formats that would cause the average person to abandon the effort of learning altogether. “The Burden of Choice” was designed as a solution to these problems, creating a visual platform to expose users to the issue— providing a place to experience and learn more about it, while giving the issue the proper acknowledgment and recognition that it deserves.