I’ve noticed that there are reviews for nearly everything online: restaurants, retail stores, cars, food, services and anything else you could imagine spending money on. I also notice on Reddit, that more the half the posts are requests for opinions of restaurants, best pizza, hair dressers, doctors, contractors, gyms, daycares, etc.
it’s a bit much.
When my wife and I were in our active weekly dating mode, we would go out to the movies and dinner every weekend. During the week, we’d check out the published reviews of the movies in the newspaper to decide what we wanted to see (unless we already knew what we wanted to see based on commercials and previews). As for theaters, we tried them all. We had our favorites but would go anywhere that were showing the movie we wanted that night.
For restaurants we might check out a place based on the local newspaper food critic’s review. Or, we’d pick a place that we had passed by many times but had never visited before. Or, we’d browse the back pages of the weekly independent paper and pick a restaurant based on its little blurb ad.
On rare occasions, we’d hit a restaurant that a friend or coworker had recommended.
We had our favorites we revisited but also liked a change of pace regularly.
In other words, we took our chances.
It was no big deal. It was fun to explore new places, try different food and discover hidden gems.
Once in a while we’d have a mediocre experience – either the service was bad, the food was meh or the wait times were hours long. When that happened, we generally just didn’t go back.
The same goes for shopping at stores, trying out a new gym, finding a doctor and choosing a car mechanic. Because we had relocated so many times to places where we knew nobody, we had no choice but to discover them ourselves.
I’ve noticed that people younger than me seem very reluctant to try anything without poring over reviews first. They don’t want to “waist their time” or “have a bad experience” .
Guess what?
You are already having a bad experience doing extensive review “research“. You’re also missing out on one of the great adventures in life of discovering things for yourself.
And lastly, you’re not minimizing much risk because these are low risk choices. If you make a bad choice, your cost is most often a bad meal, a product return or mildly crappy service. It’s not worth making yourself crazy.
Try something new without asking a hundred other people what they recommend. You might find you enjoy taking a risk.
