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For a Happier Life, Satisfice
A reformed perfectionist’s journey toward ‘good enough’
A few weeks ago, I happened to catch a Freakonomics podcast entitled “Are You a Maximizer or Satisficer?” The podcast, which originally aired in 2020, consists of a conversation between host Steven J. Dubner and psychologist Angela Duckworth about how they allocate time and resources in their lives to achieve their goals. Whereas maximizing entails seeking optimal solutions, “satisficing” — a concept pioneered by Nobel prize-winning economist Herbert A. Simon — is about finding solutions that are “good enough.” Duckworth is an unapologetic maximizer on everything except exercise, whereas Dubner has consciously embraced a mixture of maximizing and satisficing:
“…I do feel I’m a maximizer in certain realms, especially when it comes to work, things that I care about, or my family. But then I just started to feel like, if you think economically, I wanted to come up with categories of life where I consciously wanted to be a satisficer.”
In listening to the podcast, I was surprised by how much I identified with Dubner’s perspective. I began considering myself a perfectionist — essentially a maximizer — in the sixth grade. At that time, perfectionism was my armor, a reactionary identity adopted partly in self-defense against the middle school boys who teased…
