Most of my friends would agree that I’m a satisficer rather than a maximizer. I’m generally happy with “good enough” and don’t have the drive to get, or be, “the best”. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the gains between good enough and best, it’s just that in my mental calculus those gains aren’t worth the extra effort to get them. Or in some cases, the extra investment in knowledge required to even discern them.
Logically, it makes sense to have a “good enough” threshold, with diminishing returns to effort (it gets harder and harder to keep getting the same level of improvement) and diminishing marginal utility (getting less and less out of the improvement as needs are met or sensitivity to differences exceeded), eventually the balance tips in favor of being satisfied with the current situation.
Many of my friends are maximizers, and it seems to me that they are constantly working (and sometimes stressing) about making things just a little bit better. Especially when things are already pretty great. Getting up to adjust the lighting in the room, changing a good song to play a better one, making a gourmet meal instead of just a good one, continually upping their game, continually improving.
Now, of course, no one is truly an absolute maximizer. It’s more of a spectrum, more a matter of where you set the “good enough” bar. And I know that my confusion at how high some people set it is just a matter of different subjective costs and benefits. For some people, for some of the things, the extra work is actually enjoyable or the cost of lower quality is actually painful.
It’s also true that people farther along the maximizer spectrum generally end up having nicer things than I do. They drink better wine, eat better food, wear nicer clothes, throw better parties, go on better trips. And it’s not (just) because they have more money, it’s because they care enough, are driven enough, to do the work to take everything from pretty great to insanely good.
A few weeks ago, I was discussing this all with the Degenerate, wondering at the trade-offs involved, whether being more easily satisfied was a blessing or a curse. He’s an even bigger satisficer than I am, unswayed by any expectations or social pressure to budge even an inch beyond his seemingly-easy-to-reach threshold. I wondered how he saw it.
“Here’s the thing,” he said, leaning forward conspiratorially. “I’m going to let you in on a little secret.”
“I’m actually a maximizer, I’m just playing a different game.”
The game he’s playing, he claimed, is the meta-game instead of the game. He said, the real optimal strategy in life is to be a satisficer who surrounds himself with maximizing friends. With this strategy, he told me, you can adopt a “good enough” attitude and be easily satisfied when your own effort is required. But you also get the benefit of all the maximization efforts of your friends. He called it “trickle-down maximization.”
I said that it sounded a little like free-loading - and he admitted that to some extent it was and wouldn’t work if everyone adopted it. But, he said, it’s also true that, to find and keep those maximizing (and hopefully generous) friends, you have to put in effort and have something to offer them in exchange. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, he said, even a gourmet one your friends prepare you.
But with a little effort and talent, he claimed, one could have the best of both worlds. He said his approach – a tried-and-true one – was what he called the “bard” strategy: roaming around being entertaining and affable enough (but not maximally entertaining and affable!) so that the friends want him around and feel generous towards him.
Uncomfortable, I said it didn’t sit well with me, felt a little too calculating to me.
“Pffft!” he said. “That’s why you’re so damn good at it, you don’t even know you’re doing it. You’re just running around, trying to be a good friend and wondering why everything is so good.”
Well well well Since i know both you and the degenerate… i’ll agree to disagree with your assessment. Certain breakfast pizza comes to mind….
True dat