From Stella, your emotional wellness AI
Type your options, press Pick one, then notice how it lands.
Type your options and press Pick one. The pick shows up here.
A decision maker picks one of your options at random so you don't have to. Type two to six options, or tap Yes or no for a should-I-do-it question, then press Pick one. Every option has the same chance, and the pick is instant. The useful part often comes a second later, in how the pick lands, so one question asks about that. You can skip it.
Two to six, a few words each: three places to eat, two job offers, or Yes and No. Leave out names and anything you wouldn't want to share.
Press Pick one and it chooses at random, with every option equally likely. Pick again as often as you like. The card keeps the earlier picks too.
Say whether the pick brought relief, a pang, a shrug or nothing clear yet. Or skip that. Then copy, print or share the card. What you do next is up to you.
Three picks, each with the card it made. The pick is random every time. The useful part is the line under it.
Example written for this page
Thai, pasta at home or the burger place
Pasta at home
Didn't mind. That can mean the options are close enough that any of them would do.
Any of the three would have been fine. That's when a random pick saves you twenty minutes of going back and forth.
Example written for this page
Yes or No
No
Yes
A pang. That can mean you were hoping for a different option. Which one did you want it to land on?
Picking again after a Yes, then feeling a pang at the No, says more than either pick did. The decision is still theirs to make, with the facts in front of them.
Example written for this page
Call my sister, clear the spare room, go for a long walk or do nothing
Call my sister
Relieved. That can mean part of you had already chosen this one before the pick.
Relief at a pick often means you'd half decided already.
When the question is whether to do something at all, tap Yes or no and the fields fill with Yes and No. Press Pick one and it picks one of the two, each equally likely.
A yes/no pick is a coin toss without the coin. It suits choices where either answer is livable and you've gone back and forth for longer than the choice deserves: whether to go to the party, whether to send the message tonight or tomorrow, whether to sign up for the class.
When a pick lands, you often feel something before you think anything: a little relief, a small sinking feeling, or nothing much. That reaction tells you something a list of reasons doesn't. If you felt a pang, ask which option you were hoping for. If you felt relief, you may have decided already.
You don't have to follow the pick. In one large experiment, economist Steven Levitt had people who were stuck on a big choice flip a coin. Those the coin told to make a change were more likely to make it, and six months later they reported being happier than those the coin told to stay put. Everyone in it chose to take part and rated their own happiness, so read it as a sign that people stuck on a choice can be too cautious. It doesn't show that change is the better option.
Source: experiment in which people stuck on a choice flipped a coin, Steven D. Levitt, The Review of Economic Studies, 2021.
A random pick is the wrong tool for choices about your health, legal matters, money you can't afford to lose or anyone's safety. Those need facts, time and often a person who knows the area: a doctor, a lawyer, a financial adviser or someone you trust.
It's also the wrong tool when one option has a cost you haven't looked at yet. If what you typed into a search bar was closer to “help me make a decision” than “pick for me”, start by writing the reasons down.
For small choices, let the pick stand and move on. The time you save is the point, and none of the options will matter much by next week.
For bigger ones, use the pick as a question, not an answer. Run it once, notice how it lands, then decide with that in hand. If the same option keeps disappointing you when it comes up, that's worth a closer look at what you value.
A random pick can show you which way you were already leaning. It can't ask what the pang was about, or help you say the decision out loud to the person it affects.
When a choice keeps coming back, talking it through can help more than another pick. Stella is your emotional wellness AI. Tell her what you're choosing between, by voice or text, and she tells you straight but kindly. The choice stays yours.
You type two to six options and press Pick one. It chooses one of them at random and shows it straight away. It doesn't read what you typed, and it doesn't favor the first option or the longest one. Press Pick again for a new pick. Your card lists the earlier picks too.
Yes. Each pick comes from your browser's built-in random number source, and every option has the same chance every time. That also means a random decision maker can land on the same option twice in a row. A repeat isn't a sign that it's the one to choose. It's chance doing what chance does.
No. For a small choice, letting the pick stand saves time. For a bigger one, the pick works better as a question: did you feel relief or a pang when it landed? Decide with that in hand. The card keeps your reaction next to the pick, so you can look at it again later.
Then you've learned which option you were hoping for, and that's often the most useful thing a random pick can show you. You can pick again. But if you keep picking until it lands on one option, you probably have your answer. Say it to yourself plainly and see how it sits.
Yes. Tap Yes or no and the two fields fill with Yes and No, then press Pick one. It suits questions where either answer is livable and you've been stuck for a while. For choices about health, legal matters, money or safety, a random pick is the wrong tool.
