Quicker Decision Making – Be A “Satisficer”

Satisficing is a mental shortcut to ease the load of decision making. Practicing it can relieve stress, decrease anxiety and make you happier, immediately! Here’s how to use it to improve the positive impact on you from your decision making. (Reading time 180 seconds)

Satisficing, a combination of satisfy and suffice, was coined by Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon while at Carnegie Mellon. He used it to explain a quicker approach to decision making, especially when an optimal solution cannot be reasonably found. People who employ this approach are happier than those referred to as “maximizers”, those who always strive to choose the best possible option.

With today’s massive eruption of choices trying to optimize every choice can bog you down both professionally and personally. Just planning dinner…eat out, take out, or the grocery store? If you choose to cook the typical large chain grocery store will offer you over 200 choices of frozen dinners, 3000 choices of natural and organic foods plus hundreds of choices each of cereals, cookies, even air fresheners as you walk down the aisle. A grocery store opened near me recently with over 1800 different selections of wine.

This flow of choices floods through our way of living decision making whether it’s about food, shelter, medical care, work or entertainment. We can’t spend as much time evaluating each option as past generations. Deciding what to watch on TV was a lot easier when there were only three channels.

Too many choices can and do paralyze decision making leading to a much documented occurrence called choice overload phenomenon (more choice leads to a lower probability that individuals will choose to choose). A study using data from 800,000 employees eligible for Vanguard funds found that for every ten funds added to the choice menu 2% fewer employees opted to participate at all. 50 more funds, 10% less participated despite the fact that many of these were giving up matching funds. More choices can discourage choosing.

With so many choices in so many areas of our life we cannot and should not try and find the optimum choice for most of them. As Dr. Barry Schwartz, a leading academic and writer in this field says, in most cases, “Good enough is good enough.”

Doing the research for this article reminded me of my maximizer tendency. I’ve known my inclination to be a “Better Dealer” for decades but had recently drifted off keeping it in check. A minor accident had crunched the front end of my wife’s car. I had worked through the other driver’s insurance company to check out repairs. I was not totally satisfied with either shop’s quality or their price for some non-accident related touch up we wanted done. I called another shop then postponed making a decision wondering about an even better deal around the corner. That was eight months ago! ( I can give you all the excuses but in reality shame on me). Last week I tapped into my satisficer self and said “I will check out one more shop and decide!” I searched for a highly rated body shop, went there and chose them. No more better dealing. I am so happy!! I made a decision and it’s no longer hanging over my head. Repairs will be done next week.

I have since gone on in a satisfactory and sufficient way to check off a number of pending, “maybe there’s a better option” decisions that have resulted in positive immediate results. I now steer many of my decisions to the satisfied/suffice side, but not all of them. There are both pros and cons to each side of this equation and it is wise to slide on the continuum depending on the real magnitude of each choice.

Dr. Schwartz, now at Berkley and his former colleagues at Swathmore College, tracked 518 college seniors from October through their graduation in June as they pursued their job searches. Consistently they found that maximizers found better jobs. However, despite a 20% bigger average paycheck than the satisficers the maximizers felt worse about their jobs. Schwartz found that maximizers self-criticize themselves because they couldn’t check out every opportunity and eventually had to pick one. He says “Maximizers make good decisions and end up feeling bad about them. Satisficers make good decisions and end up feeling good.” Nothing in the study indicated that either maximizers or satisficers make more bad decisions.

So, which are you? A maximizer or a satisficer? Researchers place most of us on a continuum leaning more in one direction or the other. For those that are more strongly inclined to one pole the research shows people are happier, less stressed and have less anxiety when they are more to the satisficer side of the scale. When I refocus on that direction for many of my decisions, as I have recently, I know I am.

Here are some conclusions I believe are valid take aways from this research to apply to life.

Making decisions makes you happy, less stressed and anxious. Your brain relaxes.
Overthinking to maximize outcomes for most decisions slows you down, creating anxiety, and stress from decision overhang.
Some version of the 80/20 rule should be brought to bear on your decisions. 20% or less of your decisions will benefit from sliding up on the maximizer scale. 80% or more you can slide over to the satisficer side. You will save time, mental will power and be quite satisfied with most of the outcomes.
Break some maximizer habits. Don’t over-shop. Two stores are probably enough to find something that will prove fine.
Once the decision is made don’t re-ponder all the unchosen options. Move on. There are lots of other decisions that demand your attention.

Ask yourself…are you a maximizer suffering from some unmade decision overhang? If so make a decision now, or commit to making your choice by the end of the week. You will be happier for it.

And remember, for most decisions…good enough is good enough.

Jim Bird

Publisher

Note: Sheena Iyengar and Wei Jiang at Columbia Business School New York authored the study using the Vanguard Fund Data.

Reference: www.worklifebalance.com