“Satisficing”? How to optimize for happiness in decision making

Why making “good enough” decisions improve your effectiveness

Satisficing is a term coined by Herbert Simon, a combination of the words “satisfy” and “suffice”. Due to the large amounts of information and interrelatedness among them, it is often too much of a cognitive overload for anyone to make decisions other than with heuristics.

Interestingly enough, the other end of the scale is… maximizing. Instead of settling for a good option, maximizing is the state of striving for optimal decisions. However, it seems that research by Schwartz et al. has shown maximizers are less satisfied with their decisions than satisficers.

There are a few reasons why this is the case (among a few others): It’s hard to collect all the information for optimal decision making, difficult to determine which is the best option, and it’s simply more onerous to make a decision with too many choices.

Working today is like an endless cycle of trying to collect information to maximize decisions, but satisficing when decisions are actually made.

With the influx of information drowning us, with ever more data sources, articles to read, and minutes to catch up on, it can be really tough to assimilate all these points in our head to actually make much use of it.

Maybe satisficing works after all

It turns out that satisficing can be a good option to make most day-to-day decisions. From shopping to picking options for lunch, we satisfice all the time. But what about work?

In a study to find out if self-confessed maximizers do better in work situations after all, researchers found that maximizers tended to put off decision making and compare themselves against others. They were more unhappy before and after the process, and were more likely to regret the outcome. They also made poorer choices.

The effectiveness of satisficing may be explained by intuition. Many consider intuition as the culmination of past experience, and hence may equip you, subconsciously, when you are trying to make a decision.

Satisficing for your happiness

Information overload can choke up decision making very quickly, resulting in the same outcomes as maximizers often experience. Decision paralysis from having too many connected or conflicting data at work can affect your efficacy and obfuscate your intuitive decision-making abilities.

To still incorporate these data for a more comprehensive view of the situation, however, you can use more digestible chunks of information that your brain can assimilate better. Reading summaries and digests are great ways to find the important parts of the data, as is limiting yourself to only the top sources of data you can trust (like an outstanding colleague, or summarized findings from a top research firm, for example).

This isn’t to say that you should simply make the most obvious or available decision. However, think of every decision as a thorough deliberation, running through all available options that have been recommended or you believe are good, and choose the best out of these options. By making clear lists, and an informed but efficient decision, you can avoid situations where decisions are put off due to excessive information searching to “maximize” the decision being made.

If everyone made the most locally optimal decision by satisficing, it can lead to highly effective outcomes when everything comes together. While it sounds counter-intuitive that settling for a “good enough” option will lead to the best outcomes, often we realize that the “best” in a situation can often just be a “good enough” solution that we felt was the best at the time.