Satisfice: working the good enough principle
When I had a regular job, or when I do any project, my first impulse is to move mountains. Every day I subscribe to the notion that I can and should be able to move that mountain — if only I were organized enough, smart enough, quick enough and all the other enoughs — is a day that I am subscribing to the lure of perfection. To protect me from depleting workaholism, I fill my mental wheelbarrow full of a fraction of the mountain. I can do something for the day and forget about straining to do the impossible.
Herbert A. Simon introduced the term “satisfice.” In the Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy, you’ll find its definition,
“Satisficing action can be contrasted with maximizing action, which seeks the biggest, or with optimizing action, which seeks the best. . . Doubts have arisen about the view that in all rational decision-making, the agent seeks the best result. Instead, it is argued, it is often rational to seek to satisfice i.e. to get a good result that is good enough although not necessarily the best.”
