Satisficing vs Maximizing: Good Enough is Great

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 rat