How understanding decision-making styles can improve wellbeing

According to various sources, the average person makes 35,000 decisions a day. These choices affect their existence in many ways, from determining how they spend the next hour to influencing the course of the rest of their life. So, it’s unsurprising that refining decision-making skills is a big topic in the field of self-improvement. To make more effective choices, however, it’s necessary to understand innate processing tendencies. A framework for doing this, known as the maximiserversus-satisficer theory, can shed light on how different people come to decisions. Much like the concept of extrovert versus introvert, it’s a good starting point for self-reflection and can help you become more familiar with how your mind works.

Perfect vs good enough

US Nobel Prize-winning economist Herbert A Simon coined ‘satisficing’ –a portmanteau of ‘satisfying’ and ‘sufficing’ – in his 1956 paper, Rational Choice and the Structure of the Environment. He went on to write about maximising and satisficing, introducing a framework that has been used by psychologists, behavioural scientists and coaches ever since. The theory highlights two approaches to decision-making that sit either end of a sliding scale. Maximisers tend to analyse a decision extensively and explore all the permutations of all the options available until they’ve established which path they feel will have the best outcome. Satisficers prioritise efficiency of time and effort. Their primary aim is to reach a conclusion quickly by adopting an it’s-good-enough mentality.