Will It Satisfice?
Satisficing.
You’re right, it sounds like another buzzword. Instead, it’s a theory about how we humans make decisions, from Nobel Prize winning social scientist Herbert Simon.
Satisficing describes how decision making is far from rational and perfect, instead we need to find “optimum solutions for a simplified world” or ”satisfactory solutions for a more realistic world”. These solutions satisfice by being good enough.
In a recent conversation with my son, we were talking about effort and reward. He had analysed a number of things that he had to do for school, sport and at home and when asked about the time needed for a particular task, he replied “it’s all about effort and reward, Mum.”
It was satisficing in action.
And it was a good lesson to remember that at school, home, and in our workplaces, we have to constantly discern where the effort and reward balance should be struck.
We live in a world where cognitive overload abounds. We are decision fatigued as we make thousands of decisions, big and small, each and every day. For most of these decisions, satisficing is more than good enough.
In his book, The Organised Mind, Daniel Levitin describes how an everyday task such as grocery shopping has changed in the last 40+ years:
In 1976, the average supermarket stocked 9,000 unique products; today that number has ballooned to 40,000 of them, yet the average person gets 80%– 85% of their needs in only 150 different supermarket items. That means that we need to ignore 39,850 items in the store.
No matter how mighty our brain power is, this is tiring.
When we enter our workplaces with the expectations of excellence, high productivity and consistent performance, we can feel compelled to put 100% of energy into every interaction, every decision, every task.
Our human limitations precede us and it is impossible to be at that 100%+ level all the time.
Which makes me wonder how adopting mindful satisficing might help us find the balance between effort and reward.
Just as my son demonstrated recently, it is worth considering:
How much effort is necessary for the reward?
What are the tasks and decisions that require 100+% effort?
How can I simplify the decision I need to make?
What tools do I have available that will help to reduce the cognitive load?
Who / what can take on some of the simpler tasks and decisions?
Which decisions fatigue me more than others?
How might I refresh my mental energy?
Rather than being burdened by constant cognitive overload, mindful satisficing might just be what moves us closer to a more satisfying work life.