The Link Between Meditation and Satisficing

First, Sam Harris presents evidence in his book “Waking Up” that the default mode network, a part of the brain which is responsible for autopilot behavior, is highly associated with depression, anxiety, and lack of satisfaction.

Second, maximizers are people who insist on having the best option there is when choosing things for themselves, and satisficers are people who insist on a “good-enough” option. Barry Schwartz cites literature in his book “The Paradox of Choice” that the former are depressed, anxious, and less satisfied.

Both books are advocates for a certain approach to life, particularly in the 21st century Western World. Harris lists off a litany of positives around mindfulness/meditation, and Schwartz advocates for the deliberate restriction of choice. Thus, the association between bad outcomes — depression, anxiety, lack of satisfaction — is taken by the authors to imply a causal relationship, with the direction of causality flowing from their variable of interest to the undesirable, and not the other way around.

So, assuming that the authors’ assumption is right, and the causality doesn’t flow the other way, might we be able to draw a connection between satisficing and mindfulness? Well, satisficing is the act of turning your back on choices presented to you in favor of a choice that is good enough. Mindfulness has a similar essence, which is to reject stimulus presented to you in favor of one.

My theory is that this act, of focusing and paying attention to less than what feels natural, to one choice instead of many present and available, is what fosters love and gives rise to the pleasant feelings associated with love. In entertaining other options, that we can’t devote as much attention as we want to, we are forced to consider the opportunity cost of the thing we choose, which opportunity cost increases with the number of options we consider.

A question I walk away from this with is “Am I fooling myself to think that I can have choice, that I can strike a good balance in the explore/exploit trade-off?” I often think of being able to explore a lot, different music, different relationships, different books, but avoid the pain of an eventual massive opportunity cost. Maybe, though, I’m just distracting myself from the ever-mounting opportunity cost of whatever decision I’ll eventually take by flitting about from new pasture to new pasture, subsisting on novelty rather than devotion, and I’ll eventually pay the price.