Get Good At “Satisficing”
The decision making strategy you didn’t know you needed.
Herbert Simon, a Nobel Prize winning sociology and political science professor, coined the term “satisficing” by combining the words, satisfy and suffice.
Satisficing is a decision-making process in which an individual makes a choice that is satisfactory rather than optimal. (Source)
If you are a recovering perfectionist, you may be cringing right now, but please keep reading.
Satisficing is about prioritizing effort over outcome.
In a situation where it is challenging (or even impossible) to collect all the information needed to make an optimal decision, satisficing is a way to reserve your energy for more important tasks.
An example:
When you are at the grocery store looking for apples. You may take a few pieces off the top of the pile, make a quick inspection, and choose the one that looks the best to you. This is an example of satisficing.
The opposite strategy is optimization/maximization. This would mean you inspect every apple on the shelves and in the back of the store before making your selection and potentially not making a selection at all if none of the apples meet your specified criteria.
Satisficing as a productivity strategy.
By determining what is important to you, setting a small number of criteria, and putting aside time to decide about lower priority items, you can create efficiency, reduce stress, and reach your goals faster.
Instead of spending precious energy whittling down choices and considering options, you can move on quickly to more important tasks. This allows you to over deliver on meaningful projects and give the minimum needed effort to complete less significant tasks.
Getting started with satisficing is as easy as ranking your to-do list. Once you have decided your most important and least important tasks, you can make your plan based on how much energy you wish to spend on each section of your list.
Setting aside time to complete the less important tasks with a timeframe can help you practice moving through them more efficiently.
Check back in with yourself to see where you are spending your energy. If you are giving lots of time and resources attempting to maximize less important tasks, it’s time to refocus on what is most important to you, and satisfice the rest.
