When Good Enough is The Best Choice! MAXIMIZERS VS. SATISFICERS
Introduction
Herbert Simon is one of maybe a dozen people in the twentieth century who can legitimately claim to have helped build the modern world. He won a Nobel Prize. He won the Turing Award, the "Nobel Prize of computing." He co-created some of the first artificial intelligence programs ever written, and by every account from the people who knew him best, he ate the same breakfast, in the same order, for decades. He also lived in the same house for 46 years.
If anyone on earth had the analytical horsepower to build himself the "optimal" life, it was Herbert Simon, but when it came to his own daily life, he did almost none of the optimizing we assume smart, capable people are supposed to do.
WHO WAS HERBERT SIMON
Let's back up. Herbert Simon spent most of his career at Carnegie Mellon. He's the reason the term "bounded rationality" exists. It is the idea that human beings don't have infinite time, infinite information, nor infinite mental processing power to weigh every option before making a decision. We're not the perfectly rational "economic man" that classical economics assumed. We're working with limited brainpower, limited time, and limited information, every single day.
Out of that idea, Simon coined a word that's now used across psychology, economics, and computer science: satisficing. It's a blend of "satisfy" and "suffice." Instead of searching for the objectively best possible option (the mathematically optimal choice) a satisficer sets a "good enough" threshold, and takes the first option that clears it.
Simon didn't think satisficing was a compromise or a lesser strategy. He thought it was what rational behavior actually looks like for a creature with a brain like ours. The people trying to find the mathematically best decision in every domain of life aren't smarter, they're just burning enormous amounts of energy chasing a target that keeps moving.
THE RESEARCH: MAXIMIZERS VS. SATISFICERS
Decades after Simon coined the term, psychologist Barry Schwartz and a team of researchers decided to actually test this. In 2002, they published a study built around what they called the Maximization Scale, a way to measure how much a person tries to find the objectively best option in everyday decisions, versus how willing they are to settle for "good enough."
They ran this across seven different samples of people. This pattern held up every time: people who scored high as "maximizers", the folks agonizing over every purchase, every restaurant, every decision, reported lower happiness, lower optimism, lower self-esteem, and lower life satisfaction. They also reported higher depression, higher perfectionism, and higher regret.
In follow-up studies, maximizers were consistently less satisfied with the actual outcomes of their decisions, even when, objectively, they'd made better decisions than the satisficers in the room. Because a maximizer doesn't measure success against "was this good?" They measure it against "was this the best possible thing I could have chosen?" That question doesn't have a finish line. There's always another option you didn't check. Always a better review you didn't read.
That's the trap. More options were supposed to make us happier. The research says, past a certain point, they do the opposite.
WHY THIS MATTERS RIGHT NOW "LIFEMAXXING"
We're living through a moment where optimization has become a personality trait. People are "biohacking" their sleep, running their morning routine through a spreadsheet, treating vacation planning like a logistics operation, agonizing over which of forty neighborhoods, forty condos, forty insurance plans is technically correct. Online, people call this "lifemaxxing" — treating your entire life like a video game stat sheet you're trying to max out.
Herbert Simon would have looked at that and said: you're spending your limited, precious decision-making energy on the wrong things. Not because those decisions don't matter — some of them do — but because not every decision deserves the same level of analysis. The breakfast doesn't need forty minutes of research. The hat doesn't need a12-tab comparison spreadsheet. Save that energy for the decisions that are actually going to shape your life.
THE PRACTICAL TAKEAWAY
This is where it gets personal, especially if you're in the middle of a big life transition like retirement, or relocation. I’ve seen this many times with people planning a move overseas. They'll spend six months trying to find the "best" destination, the "best" real estate agent, the "best" possible internet provider, etc. They end up in (what we all know as) analysis paralysis on simple things that have several perfectly good answers. Simon's version of wisdom wasn't "don't think carefully." It was: decide what "good enough" looks like before you start searching, and once an option clears that bar, take it. Stop the search. Redirect that energy toward the handful of decisions in your life that are actually irreversible and actually worth maximizing.
Summary
Chasing "the best" in everything doesn't make you happier. It makes you tired, and often, less satisfied with a good outcome. So here's a challenge: pick one recurring decision in your life this week, what you eat for breakfast, what you wear, which route you drive, and just decide it once. Stop relitigating it every day. See what you do with the energy you get back.
Remember,
Better thinking equals a better life,
Joe
Citations
Wikipedia Herbert A. Simon (biography, awards, career): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon
Britannica Herbert A. Simon (Nobel Prize, satisficing theory): https://www.britannica.com/biography/Herbert-A-Simon
Schwartz, Ward, Monterosso, Lyubomirsky, White & Lehman (2002), "Maximizing Versus Satisficing: Happiness Is a Matter of Choice," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Full PDF: https://bschwartz.domains.swarthmore.edu/maximizing.pdf
The Quiet Life "How to Make Better Decisions" (Katherine Simon Frank's account of her father's daily routines): https://thequietlife.net/p/how-to-make-better-decisions