Less Freedom.

Sometimes, steal freedom away from others can help us.
Here I have three situations for examples.

Situation: Deciding a Restaurant with friends.
1
Suppose my friend (let's call him Bob) and I have to decide which restaurant to visit.
I used to follow Bob's decision.
I tried not to show my preference because I thought then Bob would have more freedom to choose.
I was wrong!
Bob didn't have a freedom; instead, he had a work to do.
He has to choose the restaurant from the scratch.
He might like such work or such authority.
But many of us don't like it.

2
One day, my colleage asked me to go out for a dinner.
He asked me what kinds of food I like with "List"
He gave me a "List": Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Italian, and French.
It made me very easy to answer.

Situation: Seating in Class.

I teach math at high school.
In my first year, I didn't preassign seat for students.
So my students can choose any seats and they could change seat everyday.
But some of them had difficulty choosing a seat. Certainly they didn't like this freedom.
Also, most of them didn't change their seat since first day. They don't want to think about it anymore.

From second year, I stole their freedom of choosing a seat and it didn't cause any problems.
I learned that some people don't like freedom.
Situation: Making a Questionnaire.
Actually I should've learned this strategy long time ago in sociology course in college.
I had to make a questionaire to conduct research.
My teacher advised
"Free Response type questions are more difficult to answer than Multiple Choice type."


What I want to say?
Freedom means that one has choices, hence freedom requires thought and decision.
Less freedom, less thinking....and things often go more smoothly.
So sometimes I should deliberately take away one's freedom...for better.
But be careful.
No freedom, people dont' have to think anything. But they will complain!