Are you a maximiser or a satisficer?

This week, I spent the best part of 3 hours deciding on some clothes hangers last week. (Here's me and the eventual product just hanging out. 😎)

ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY MINUTES. TEN THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED SECONDS. HALF OF MY BILLABLE WORKING DAY!!!

Ok, maybe this particular situation isn't entirely relatable - if it is, maybe TikTok should hire me as their algorithm overseer - but I'm absolutely certain the thought process behind it is. And that thought process? Maximisation.

What is maximisation?

I first came across the term in The Unexpected Joy Of The Ordinary by Catherine Gray (#afflink) in a chapter called, fittingly SATISFICERS VS MAXIMISERS. The premise, coined by Herbert Simon and popularised by American psychologist Barry Schwarz, is that people make decisions in one of two ways: If you're a satisficer (for fellow word nerds, that's a portmanteau of satisfying and sufficing) you will decide, relatively easily and quickly, on something that is perfectly good enough, and then move onto the next thing on your to-do list. By contrast if you're a maximiser - like me - you will painstakingly, exhaustively, unrelentingly seek THE BEST outcome, and won't stop until you find it (and, what's more, often ending up feeling disappointed when that finally comes.)

Steve Jobs, for example, is a maximiser - Laurene, his wife, once said that they took eight years to decide on a sofa, which sounds objectively absurd, right? Until you consider that I took 3 hours to decide on some bloody clothes hangers, an item which has a very simple function, doesn't need to be pretty because no-one will see them, and which doesn't need to be comfy because they will definitely never be anywhere near my backside.

Am I a maximiser?

The reason I think this may be relatable to you is because a question I got a lot last week was a panicked WHAT SHOULD I HAVE ON MY APPRECIATION SOCIETY T-SHIRT?! (Thank you for your orders, by the way; Claire is beavering away on them this very second!). And the reason I share it isn't because I've found a way to curb it (sorry), but because it's my guess that the overlap between enthusiasts and maximisers in this sense is really quite high.

I generally don't pay loads of mind to personality tests: I know I'm the same Myers-Brigg as Obama, and refuse to take the Enneagram in case I don't come out as an Enthusiast and therefore have been stringing everyone along this whole time, and that's about it. (Not to say that I don't think they have their advantages - I just don't follow them religiously!) But that means I do feel a bit of weird FOMO when I see people sharing INFJ memes or #Enneagram1Life, because I don't fully see myself in those. But maximisation, you won't be surprised to hear, I can fully see myself in, my own moonface reflecting back at me like one big ol' mirror, and so I just wanted to share in case it resonated with anyone else as well. #JustMaximiserThings

Now taking bets to see how long it takes me to clear my floordrobe, even with said hangers…

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