In praise of Satisficers
A rational approach to contentment and some thoughts on stoicism
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For the greatest part of my life I conducted myself firmly believing that only the perfect moment mattered, that a man should strive for excellence in every aspect of life and that anything below that, according to one’s personal judgement of what constitutes excellence, should be scorned and avoided. I believed that I had the right to feel contentment only when I had achieved my highest aspirations, be they social, professional, philosophical, etc.
In other words, I was a maximizer.
In psychology and decision-making science, maximizers desire the best possible result; “maximizing” means expending time and effort to ensure you’ve solved something as best as possible. On the opposite side of the spectrum, there are the so-called satisficers, those that desire a result that is good enough to meet some criterion. Satisficers are individuals who are pleased to settle for a good enough option, not necessarily the very best outcome in all respects.
These definitions were first developed in relation to utility maximization and decision-making, but they can very well be applied to how we conduct our life.
We can use one of the two approaches in everything we do in life, whether it is with regards to the friendships we decide to invest more time on, the dates we go on, the schools we want to get in, the companies we want to work for.
I first heard this concept from Prof. Barry Schwartz in one of my classes at Berkeley. And I remember vividly one of the examples he made when discussing it: “..a maximizer would go in the world waiting for the best partner to come. After all why bother spending time with someone and investing energy in a relationship when maybe I can turn the corner and find someone that better resembles my ideal partner?”
This concept has been in my mind for many months. I couldn’t help but notice a strong tie between the concept of self-projection and that of maximization.
As I wrote in a previous piece, happiness is a state only attainable in relation to the idealized version of ourselves. The closer I feel to that image of myself in the future — that self-projection — the happier I feel, and vice versa.
Happiness is an intrinsically subjective state — my happiness is different from yours, and for some people happiness will mean finding love, for others having a successful career, for some others both. However, the core of what constitutes that state of happiness is the same for all human beings, and that is a feeling of importance.
Whatever kind of action someone may try to achieve as a way to become that self-projection, the core of it is tied to attaining a feeling of importance, a feeling that we matter.
But how could I reconcile these two concepts? Until one day it felt very obvious.
For a maximizer, only becoming that perfect self-projection matters, whereas for a satisficer it only matters to make the most of whatever comes to life, even if at times that might not coincide with his or her self-projection, the ideal self.
However, I don’t believe that this means forgetting one’s dreams, and settling for something that doesn’t coincide with our aspirations, be it with regards to our ideal partner or ideal job. A satisficer should still keep his or her self-projection in mind and still strive to become that idealized version, but in the meantime, he or she should make the most of what life has to give.
A 2002 study by Schwartz et al. published in the Journal of Personality and Personal Phycology shows how “maximizers may be more concerned with relative positions, and thus with social comparisons, than satisficers.”
This comes as a no surprise to me; after all, isn’t our self-projection just a constant comparison we have in our mind?
In my view, a satisficer should have an eye to the future but spend most of the time in the present, as opposed to a maximizer that spends most of his time in the future, trying to attain that perfect self-projection. But if I’m in the future, then I’m not in the present, and if I am not in the present, I cannot be happy. For if I am in the future my expectations are definitely going to make everything that happens in my life pale in comparison to my ideal self-projection. A maximizer is also more prone to spend a lot of time in the past, thinking whether or not that choice was the best possible or if he could have done better.
Being in the present means satisficing, making the most of what we have now and recognizing that only our willingness to shape our present will have an impact in our life.
Many times in my life I preferred nothing to something only because that something didn’t meet my idealized version of that something…with no care whatsoever as to whether that something might have brought me any joy!!
This I call irrational! This is the peril of being a maximizer! Being in the moment means keeping your best aspirations in mind WHILE making the most of every situation.
Being a satisficer to me means setting one’s goals high but living without anxious dependence upon fulfilling them, knowing that everything is within reach.
If the goal of maximizers is to maximize their utility or pleasure, then it is just irrational to go in the world with a maximizer’s mindset! Being a satificier means making the most out of what the current scenario is, and in so doing open up worlds that are precluded to a maximizer. In other words, in order to be a true maximizer you need to be a satisficer!
Seneca said that “true happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”
But this doesn’t mean that human beings should not strive to change their present condition. Wiser than the one described by Seneca is the man that has the courage to cherish what he has WHILE striving to become a better version of himself.
After all Marcus Aurelius was emperor of Rome and Seneca sat in the Roman senate. They both came to their stoic conclusions only after having become what they became!
Being a stoic, just like being a satisficer, doesn’t mean hopeless acceptance of what is, but rather courageous appreciation of life while striving to become that better self one has in mind.
Maximizers seek happiness. Maximizers believe there is an end to their journey where everything will be aligned for the best, where their perfect self-projection will be aligned with reality.
Satisficers seek contentment, the satisfying feeling that you’re currently taking the best crack you can at a good life path.
P.S.
The term happiness is a social construct which in the past 100 or so years has evolved into a commercially misleading gimmick often concealed under the ‘self-improvement’ genre. Most of the time we should rather use the term well-being or contentment when we mention the word happiness. I touched on this in this piece and will probably dedicate a separate essay to this topic, but for the time being I have mostly assumed in my writing that the two concepts are synonyms when in fact they are not.
These reflections are just the beginning of a much larger conversation. If you’re interested in exploring these ideas further, I’d love to hear your thoughts — schedule a call with me here.
