I went to the HRD exhibition and succumbed, not for the first time, to a nasty condition apparently called choice overload. I know that choice is supposed to be “a good thing” but it tends to throw me into an unpleasant state of dissonance. I have two ways to achieve consonance; to stay focused by sticking doggedly to a pre-prepared list of what I want or to walk away empty handed.

There are numerous situations where I become paralysed by choice-overload. Bookshops, for example, do it to me. The invitation to browse sounds innocent enough but whenever I cross the threshold of a bookshop without a list of titles to search for, I rapidly become overwhelmed. There are simply too many books that I know I should read. Supermarkets do it to me too. Take the ostensibly straightforward business of choosing a breakfast cereal; I can only survive by staying blinkered and buying exactly what I have always bought.

It all reminds me of those (unethical) experiments with poor cats who were rewarded with food whenever they responded to a triangle and punished with an electric shock whenever they did the same to a circle. The experimenters gradually smoothed the corners off the triangle until it became more like an ellipse and then, slowly, a circle. Cats, faced with too many fine discriminations, and under pressure to make the right decision and avoid an electric shock, had what we’d describe as a nervous breakdown. I’m so glad I can walk out of those bookshops!

It seems that I am not alone. When people were presented with six pots of different jams, 30 per cent bought one. However, when people were presented with 24 different jams, only 3 per cent bought one. The difference is explained by choice overload. Faced with too many fine discriminations, most people opted not to make a decision and left empty handed.

So, apologies to all you exhibitors, but perhaps you can understand why I was such a hopeless visitor to the HRD exhibition. I know I should have done better - but without a list of specific needs well, I succumbed to choice overload. Not only that, but I rapidly became disorientated, no longer clear which direction I was facing or from whence I had come. A ball of string might be the answer!