We all make choices. Every day, every hour, possibly even every minute. And to many of us freedom is the freedom to choose.

But.

And it’s a big but.

Our choices are determined by the options available to us.

For example, I no longer eat ultra-processed biscuits. Not so much because I choose not to eat them, as because I have removed the option to choose to eat them. By not having them in the house. This frees me from having to make the choice between don’t eat, or eat and regret later.

I’ve also removed the option to have them in the house by refusing to buy any that have palm oil as an ingredient. That alone narrows my options down to all-butter shortbread. And even then you have to check the back of the packet. This frees me from the having to make the choice between buying or making at home.

That may seem like a trivial example. Actually it’s not.

Because if you’re trying to eat healthily, literally watching what you eat, you soon discover that the vast majority of options on offer at supermarkets, restaurants, coffee shops, street food stalls – anywhere you buy food – are poor ones. Finding the good options is hard work. Yesterday I found less than half of a freezer cabinet in Iceland containing vegetables, simply frozen. About a half of a cabinet containing meat, simply frozen, one cabinet containing fish, simply frozen. The rest of the shop is devoted to branded, battered, breadcrumbed, pre-prepared, ultra-processed stuff.

That example is about food. But this isn’t just happening with food.

We think we have a lot of choice, but in every aspect of our lives, our options are in fact, severely limited – Unilever or P&G, Mondelez or Nestle, Pepsico or Coca Cola or Kellonova, Google or Microsoft, Apple or Android, Meta or X, Sunak or Starmer.

So, next time you’re about to judge someone for the choices they make, think about the options that are actually available to them.

Think about the options that should be available. How could you help make those options real? So that it becomes easy for people to choose the thing that’s best for them and the people around them?

Inside your own business would be a great place to start.

HT to Dan Buettner for the prompt.