The concept of a Maximizer vs. a Satisficer is something I came across recently via Brian Johnson and Optimize. It’s from psychologist Barry Schwartz in this book “The Paradox of Choice— Why More is Less.”

According to Schwartz:

“The fact that some choice is good doesn’t necessarily mean that more choice is better. As I will demonstrate, there is a cost to having an overload of choice. As a culture, we are enamored of freedom, self-determination, and variety, and we are reluctant to give up any of our options. But clinging tenaciously to all the choices available to us contributes to bad decisions, to anxiety, stress, and dissatisfaction—even to clinical depression.”

The big idea is that the amount of choice we have is a negative thing and leads to indecision and sometimes even suffering and according to Schwartz we “would be better off if we embraced voluntary constraints on our freedom of choice, instead of rebelling against them.”

Further, from Schwartz, “if you seek and accept only the best, you are a maximizer and need to be assured that every purchase or decision was the best that could be made. Yet how can anyone truly know that any given purchase or decision is absolutely the best possible? As a decision strategy, maximizing creates a daunting task, which becomes all the more daunting as the number of options increases.”

In essence, the amount of choices we have leads to a struggle to make decisions and a lack of decisiveness. In the end, too many choices, which should create more freedom, can actually create less freedom.

Schwartz believes limiting the number of choices, in the end, is actually liberating:

“The alternative to maximizing is to be a satisficer. To satisfice is to settle for something that is good enough and not worry about the possibility that there might be something better. A satisficer has criteria and standards. She searches until she finds an item that meets those standards, and at that point, she stops.”

Inevitably moving through life with the mindset of a maximizer can lead to the nagging thing that there is always something better out there.

A better job

A better mate

A better place to live

Rather than enjoying and celebrating the life they are living in the moment, maximizer’s find themselves worrying and obsessing about what their life ISN’T instead of what their life IS. This can lead to a life lived both in the past and the future, but never in the present.

Over time I’ve learned to accept my reality and to embrace and love what is in front of me. If you’re constantly chasing the perfect life you will probably keep chasing it. Like all human beings, I’m deeply flawed and I’ve made many mistakes in my life, but what I’ve learned (just recently) is to stop hiding or trying to fix my weaknesses. I now embrace them instead of perpetually trying to correct them. . This is what makes everyone unique. As a result, I can say with confidence that I’m truly living every single day in the present moment, embracing and loving what is directly in front of me without overly worrying about the future. Take care of the present and the future will take care of itself.

It’s about being in the moment versus constantly asking yourself if the moment is as good as it should be.