Satisficing vs Maximizing: Good Enough is Great

You need to buy a new winter jacket. A maximizer visits every store, checks every online retailer, reads hundreds of reviews, compares every feature and price point, and after days of research, makes a purchase, then continues checking to see if a better option appears. A satisficer defines what they need: warm, waterproof, under two hundred dollars. They visit two stores, find a jacket that meets all criteria, buy it, and move on with their life.

The maximizer may end up with a marginally better jacket. But the satisficer ends up with a better life. This paradox, that pursuing the best option often produces worse outcomes than settling for good enough, is one of the most important insights in decision science.

The Research Behind Satisficing

Herbert Simon's Insight

Herbert Simon, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics, coined the term satisficing as a combination of satisfy and suffice. He argued that human beings are not and cannot be rational optimizers because the cognitive costs of finding the optimal solution almost always exceed the benefits of having it. Instead, people set aspiration levels and choose the first option that meets them.

Simon did not view satisficing as a cognitive limitation. He viewed it as rational behavior given the constraints of limited time, limited information, and limited cognitive capacity. The truly rational approach in most situations is not to find the best answer but to find a good enough answer quickly, because the resources spent searching for the best answer have opportunity costs that the marginally better answer rarely justifies.

Barry Schwartz and the Paradox of Choice

Psychologist Barry Schwartz expanded Simon's work by studying the psychological consequences of maximizing versus satisficing. His research found that maximizers, despite often achieving objectively better outcomes, report lower satisfaction, more regret, more anxiety, and more depression than satisficers.

The reason is straightforward: maximizers are haunted by alternatives. Even after choosing, they wonder whether a better option exists. They compare their choice to every alternative they considered and every alternative they might have missed. The more options available, the more comparison points, and the worse they feel about whatever they chose. Applying sound decision-making principles often means deliberately limiting your search rather than expanding it.

Why Maximizing Fails

The Opportunity Cost of Search

Every hour spent searching for the perfect option is an hour not spent using a good-enough option. A manager who spends three months finding the perfect hire loses three months of productivity that a good-enough hire would have provided. An investor who waits for the perfect entry point misses months of returns that investing at a good-enough price would have captured.

The optimization of the decision itself comes at the expense of the optimization of the outcome, because decision time is a real cost that maximizers systematically underweight.

The Diminishing Returns of Comparison

The first few comparisons in any search are highly informative. They establish the range of options, the relevant features, and the approximate price-quality tradeoffs. Each subsequent comparison provides less new information. By the time a maximizer is on their fiftieth comparison, they are learning almost nothing new while incurring the same cognitive and time costs as the first comparison.

The Escalation of Standards

As maximizers encounter more options, their standards often escalate. Each impressive option raises the bar for the next one. This escalating standard means that the maximizer becomes progressively harder to satisfy, even as the objective quality of available options remains constant. The search itself makes satisfaction more difficult.

Post-Decision Regret

Maximizers are more susceptible to regret because they maintain awareness of all the alternatives they rejected. When the chosen option inevitably has some flaw, the maximizer imagines that one of the rejected alternatives would not have had that flaw. This counterfactual comparison is psychologically toxic because it compares a real, flawed choice with an idealized, imaginary alternative.

Satisficing in Business

Hiring Decisions

The pursuit of the perfect candidate is one of the most expensive forms of maximizing in business. Roles that stay open for months while hiring managers search for perfection impose enormous costs: existing employees are overworked, projects are delayed, and competitors capture market opportunities. Studying how effective leaders balanced thoroughness with decisiveness in hiring reveals that the best hiring outcomes often come from defining clear criteria and hiring the first candidate who meets them.

A good-enough hire who starts three months earlier often creates more value than the perfect hire who starts three months later, simply because three months of productive work has compounding effects that a marginal quality difference does not.

Product Development

Shipping a good-enough product and iterating based on real customer feedback almost always outperforms trying to ship a perfect product on the first attempt. The lean startup methodology is fundamentally a satisficing approach: define the minimum viable product, ship it, learn from real market feedback, and iterate.

Perfectionism in product development delays market entry, increases development costs, and often produces features that customers do not actually want. The maximizing approach to product development is responsible for countless products that were technically excellent but commercially irrelevant because they shipped too late.

Strategic Planning

Strategy requires choosing among uncertain options with incomplete information. Maximizing in strategic planning means analysis paralysis: endless scenario modeling, continuous data gathering, and postponed commitment. Satisficing means defining what constitutes a good-enough strategy, committing to it, and adapting based on real-world feedback.

Jeff Bezos's 70 percent rule captures this: if you have 70 percent of the information you wish you had, make the decision. Waiting for more information is maximizing, and the cost of delay usually exceeds the value of additional information. Practicing with decision-making scenarios that force time-constrained choices builds the satisficing muscle that prevents analysis paralysis.

When to Maximize and When to Satisfice

High-Consequence, Irreversible Decisions

Maximizing is appropriate for decisions that are both highly consequential and difficult to reverse. Choosing a life partner, selecting a surgical procedure, or making a bet-the-company strategic commitment deserves thorough evaluation because the cost of a suboptimal choice is high and the ability to switch is limited.

Low-Consequence, Reversible Decisions

Satisficing is appropriate for decisions that are either low-consequence or easily reversible. Choosing a restaurant, selecting a project management tool, or deciding which market to test first are decisions where the cost of a suboptimal choice is small and the ability to switch is easy. Maximizing on these decisions wastes resources that could be better deployed on consequential choices.

The Reversibility Test

Amazon's Type 1 and Type 2 decision framework maps directly to maximizing and satisficing. Type 1 decisions (irreversible, high-consequence) deserve maximizing. Type 2 decisions (reversible, lower-consequence) should be satisficed. Most decisions are Type 2, which means most decisions should be satisficed.

How to Become a Better Satisficer

Define Criteria Before Searching

Before evaluating any options, define what good enough means. What features are required? What price range is acceptable? What minimum quality level satisfies your needs? These predetermined criteria prevent the escalation of standards that maximizing produces.

Set Search Limits

Decide in advance how many options you will evaluate or how much time you will spend searching. When you reach the limit, choose the best option you have found. This constraint prevents the open-ended search that maximizing encourages.

Practice Choosing

The satisficing muscle strengthens with practice. Make small decisions quickly. Choose the first restaurant that meets your criteria. Buy the first pair of shoes that fits well and looks acceptable. Each practice repetition reinforces the habit of choosing rather than searching.

Accept Imperfection

The most important shift is psychological: accepting that imperfect choices are not failures. In a world of abundant options, every choice involves trade-offs. The satisficer accepts these trade-offs as inherent to the human condition rather than as failures of the search process.

The Freedom of Good Enough

Satisficing is ultimately about freedom. The maximizer is enslaved by the pursuit of the best, always searching, always comparing, never at peace with their choices. The satisficer is freed by the acceptance of good enough, making decisions efficiently, moving forward confidently, and spending their limited time and cognitive resources on things that matter more than marginal optimization.

Good enough is not settling. It is wisdom. It is the recognition that the perfect is not just the enemy of the good but the enemy of the happy, the productive, and the sane. In a world of infinite options, the ability to say this is good enough and mean it is one of the most valuable skills you can develop.

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Satisficing teaches us that the pursuit of the best option often produces worse outcomes than the acceptance of a good-enough one. The wisdom of knowing when to stop searching is as valuable as the ability to search well.