Just a few months ago the phrase ‘working from home‘ (WFH) carried very different connotations. Reserved for the shirkers and the untrustworthy, those who ‘worked’ from home were the envy of all and friends of none. Inhabitants of darkness and isolation, these mysterious individuals lived on holiday, found happiness in solitude and much to everyone’s annoyance, managed to do some work all at the same time.
A global pandemic later and thousands if not tens of thousands of workers find themselves shopping for adjustable desks, purchasing bespoke artwork for their Zoom backgrounds and most pertinently, combatting the urge to catch price rises in between virtual meetings.
Whilst WFH veterans have experience in this domain, us newbies have been forced to adapt during the most challenging FPL season in recent memory.
The fantastic Lateriser12 has recently preached the importance of adaptability in relation to FPL strategy and I believe this principle has merit beyond the bounds of our transfers and captaincy decisions. If we are to keep our heads above water this season, it will involve adapting to a new world in which we can linger in the FFS Members area without looking over our shoulders.
With the international break upon us, what follows is a few suggestions of social psychology strategies we can use to manage our emotions and make sound decisions in spite of this newfound freedom WFH.
1 – Push back against ‘Herd Mentality’ by restricting your intake of FPL content
With more time at home there is increased opportunity to take in FPL content. The rapid growth of the fantasy world has birthed a sea of excellent podcasts, videos, articles and statistical information presented to help us navigate the minefield of FPL. The danger, however, is that with increased exposure to information we become susceptible to ‘herd’ or ‘mob mentality’.
Social psychologists have studied the irrationality of decision-making when driven by emotional reactions such as fear – concluding that trends in consumer (or in this case, FPL manager) behaviour can be explained by our innate desire to imitate those who we believe have a higher status than us.
In our fantasy world, the wealth of experienced managers producing content can be incredibly persuasive and in order to mitigate the temptation to ‘follow the crowd’ I believe it is healthy to restrict our intake of FPL content.
Select a few favourite podcasts or content creators, perhaps with differing opinions, and stick to them on a weekly basis. This will prevent homogenous information from overloading your decisions and provide you with healthy separation from the game.
2 – Eliminate ‘Overchoice’ by forming a strategy
When looking at psychological processes, ‘overchoice’ is the phenomena that occurs when individuals are faced with an overwhelming number of similarly good options.
In most simplest terms, human beings are most satisfied when they have choice but not too much of it, as this pressures and confuses us into a state of stress. Poor decisions are made under stress.
For ‘overchoice’ to have a debilitating effect two features must be present: 1) No pre-existing bias towards any of the options; and 2) options of perceived equal merit.
Both of these challenges can be eliminated in two main ways:
Firstly, as mentioned above, allocating specific minutes (or hours) for FPL restricts the amount of time that can be spent engaged in the game and thus the number of viable options that become aware to us. With a near infinite number of transfer possibilities, overthinking can steer us further from the ‘obvious’ (typically obvious for a reason) pick.
Secondly, I believe it is important to develop a decision-making system or ‘strategy’ and stick to it – this in effect creates implicit biases which negate the impact of ‘overchoice’.
In FPL terms, what would this look like? Taking two elite managers as an example, one could adopt the strategy of chasing upside by targeting big hitters for captaincy in easy fixtures or exercise patience with proven assets based on good fixtures.
The fantastic Meet the Manager series have shown us that there are multiple ways to obtain a high rank, but most importantly, each successful manager has a way. It is the consistency to this strategy that allows these managers to increase their probability of getting returns by biasing their decisions with consistent criteria.
These strategies will all pay off over time: big hitters will deliver in easy fixtures if managers commit to the strategy and don’t get put off by failure (or success), similarly Mohamed Salah (£12.2m) will be one of the highest scorers (barring injury) and will also deliver captaincy hauls with patience.
Adopting a ‘strategy’ prevents us from emotionally reacting to isolated Gameweek outcomes and ensures us that we give probability a chance to work in our favour.
3 – Combat the ‘Pleasure Principle’ by adopting a price-change strategy
The ‘pleasure principle’ suggests that we are innately wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain.
In commercial enterprise, this is why the anticipation of missing out on a discount creates pain and anxiety (discount theory), compelling people towards emotional decisions.
With price changes seemingly more volatile than ever there is increased temptation to monitor price change websites and make numerous changes accordingly with all this ‘spare’ time at home.
To reduce anxiety and ensure reliability in decision-making, managers could look to adopt a strategy to ensure consistency. If managers wish to attack price changes to increase value, this requires earlier transfer preparation than normal.
At the other end of the scale, if managers value time and increased information this requires a more patient approach and a willingness to invest value in information.
Making a decision one way or another will prevent managers from feeling like they are ‘missing out’ on a player as their price changes, as these variations have already been factored into their strategy. Ultimately, this should allow them to compartmentalise value as one of many factors to be considered, rather than the be-all and end-all on a Saturday night.
There is no ‘right way’ to play FPL. No secret formula, hidden cheat-sheet or magic beans. What does exist is a sea of options for managers to consider and react to.
The most successful managers have one thing in common: consistency in decision-making.
In a probability-based game in which we have no control over the outcome, our challenge is not to manage our players but ourselves. WFH thus gives us more time to wrestle with our biggest mini-league rival and that person lives much closer to home than we think.
3 years, 5 months ago
Excellent article. 'Overchoice' is something I feel I struggle with in FPL, and developing a strategy is good advice. Thank you for the insights.