Be a satisficer!
If you are anything like me, making fast decisions when there are many choices is an impossibility. I find myself spending a lot of time analyzing all the options and feeling exhausted at the end. And worse of all, often having the feeling that there may be additional choices that I didn’t evaluate.
If you don’t make an effort to make a decision, you end up in the “paralysis by analysis” scenario.
This can happen with trivial decisions like what brand of coffee to buy, or important decisions like what job offer to accept or what school to attend.
I was very happy to read about a concept that I am now using almost every day: the concept of Satisficing.
Satisficing is a decision-making strategy that looks for a satisfactory or adequate result, rather than the optimal solution. The term “satisfice” was coined by American scientist and Noble-laureate Herbert Simon in 1956.
In his book “The Paradox of Choice”, psychologist Barry Schwartz explains the concept in detail, and makes the distinction between “Satisficers” and “Maximizers”.
Satisficers define satisfaction criteria for the decision they have to make. They make a decision or take action once their criteria are met, and don’t worry about the possibility that there might be something better. That doesn’t mean they’ll settle for mediocrity; their criteria can be very high; but as soon as they find the coffee brand, the job or the school that has the qualities they want, they’re satisfied.
Maximizers want to make the optimal decision. So even if they see an option that would seem to meet their requirements, they can’t make a decision until they’ve examined every possibility, so they know they’re making the best possible choice.
I am in the process of becoming a satisficer, and I cannot tell you how liberating it is! I have to admit that it’s not an easy journey. Looking for the optimum comes naturally to me, I event taught an optimization course at the University! However, in terms of making decisions, I am becoming much more efficient adopting the satisficing philosophy. I realize that by doing so I am forcing myself to define the satisfaction criteria, which before, as a maximizer, I didn’t do most of the time, at least not explicitly. I would go about find the “best” possible solution, no matter how fuzzy my idea of “best” was, or how exhausting was to try to find it.
In this modern world where we have so many options and choices, I find that being a satisfacer simplifies our lives and makes us make good decisions faster. I invite you to give it a try!
