Satisficing
Herbert Simon coined satisficing in 1956 — a portmanteau of “satisfy” and “suffice.” The concept challenged classical economics, which assumed rational agents maximize utility by evaluating all options.
Simon’s insight: evaluation isn’t free. Finding the optimal apartment requires seeing all apartments. Finding the optimal hire requires interviewing all candidates. The search itself consumes resources that could go elsewhere.
Satisficing means establishing criteria in advance, then taking the first option that meets them. The apartment with enough space, close enough to work, cheap enough. Stop searching when “good enough” appears.
The strategy is rational when search costs exceed marginal gains from continued search. The difference between the 90th-percentile option and the 95th-percentile option rarely justifies the cost of finding it.
Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice (2004) extended the argument psychologically. More options create more regret. The maximizer who chose the best available still wonders about the option they didn’t see. The satisficer, having met their threshold, experiences no such doubt.
Maximizing works when options are few and stakes are high. Satisficing works when options are many and stakes are moderate. Most decisions fall in the second category.
The skill is setting thresholds correctly. Too high and you search forever. Too low and you settle for inadequate outcomes. The threshold should reflect actual needs, not aspirational standards.
Simon received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978, partly for this work. The insight that humans don’t optimize — they satisfice — reframed how we understand decision-making under real constraints.
Go Deeper
Books
- Administrative Behavior by Herbert Simon — The 1947 original where bounded rationality first appears. Academic but foundational.
- The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz — Psychology of too many options. When maximizing backfires.
- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman — Builds on Simon’s insights about how humans actually decide.
- Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart by Gigerenzer et al. — When satisficing and fast heuristics outperform optimization.
Related: [[slack]], [[useful-fictions]]